title: Good way to deal with alpha channels in 8-bit bitmap? - OpenGL - C++
body: <p>I am loading bitmaps with OpenGL to texture a 3d mesh. Some of these bitmaps have alpha channels (transparency) for some of the pixels and I need to figure out the best way to </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>obtain the values of transparency for each pixel</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>and </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>render them with the transparency applied</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Does anyone have a good example of this? Does OpenGL support this?</p>