Why enabling transparency can lead to clipping problems ?

Question

Hi,

I'm working on a 3D graphical application in Java using the Java 3D API. I noticed that every time I was dealing with transparency, all I got in return were some clipping problems. Some parts of the scene weren't displayed properly. It might seem obvious that this would happen in a certain way but I'm looking for a logical explanation, why is this happening?

Thank you

Answer 1

You mean that looking through a window or between the leaves of a tree doesn't show everything that should be there? Then the depth buffer is filtering the distant objects out. The most foolproof way to do this is to render all the opaque objects, then render all the transparent objects last, sorted back to front.