   Translucency
  Hiya. I''m new to this board and I would like to use the occasion to say hi. So, hi Anyways, I''m working on an application that includes much 3D. I am using OpenGL for rendering. At the moment, I am facing a serious problem in one feature - implementing translucent objects. I believe I''ve read all of NeHe tutorials on this subjects, but that doesn''t seem enough.From what I''ve figured, to achieve this effect I have to draw all the triangles of my object in fartherst-to-nearest order. But, isn''t sorting at every frame too slow to achieve real-time rendering? And how exactly do I figure which of two triangles is in front? Is this sorting stuff really needed, or can I achieve translucency in a more efficent way (the thing I want to render is a little ship in a translucent bottle)? I''ll be very happy if someone can help me with this    Reality has exiled me - I am no longer bound by its laws... 
  For most transparency modes you have to do back-to-front sorting. There are a few ways around it (nvidia's order independant blending) but they are not very usefull right now.Also sorting B2F is not that much of a performace hit (except if you have +100k transparent polys). You can a bunch of tricks to speed it up. Form using frame to frame coherence and if your objects don't intersect eachother sort faces only per object and then sort the whole objects...   EDIT : And please don't cross-post!!!You should never let your fears become the boundaries of your dreams.   [edited by - _DarkWIng_ on August 3, 2003 5:33:33 PM] [edited by - _DarkWIng_ on August 3, 2003 5:36:41 PM]