Rendering multiple transparent surfaces

Yes, so in the past, one of the things that I had to do to make transparency work as expected was to combine all triangles of different surfaces into a single giant surface mesh. Then order all triangles on the fly according to camera direction such that triangles closer to the camera are rendered on top of those that are further away.

However, it is now becoming a bit complicated to merge all surfaces into a single mesh prior to rendering. So I’m really interested in a better solution.

Yes, in my case I think the only thing that would actually work would be some appropriate depth peeling that is implemented at the level of rendering meshes in Panda3D.

I actually have brought this up in an earlier discussion. Back then, I ended up reordering mesh triangles on the fly to dodge the issue. But it’s getting a bigger concern now that I’m trying to render multiple 3D meshes.

I’m actually using Panda3D as a rendering engine for an open-source biomedical imaging application for replicable brain visualizations. I think the implementation of appropriate OIT can really help my case. Are there any plans for adding this feature? I don’t think I’m that familiar with Panda3D code base to be able to offer coding help, but would definitely chip in my 2 cents to vouch for depth-peeling implementation.

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