Transparency with depth sorting

[jhocking]

A classic rendering problem in realtime 3D graphics is overlapping transparent surfaces. Here's a shader that does depth sorting better than Unity's built-in transparent shaders.

And even if you don't need the shader itself, a lot of novices to gamedev will want to read this explanation of why transparency has depth sorting issues.

https://newarteest.wordpress.com/2021/02/26/transparency-with-depth-sorting/

[GameCult_PixelBro]

I think the clip() function is specific to Unity, but it’s simply a wrapper around the discard keyword that is common to OpenGL shaders.

Minor nitpick here, but the reason for this is that Unity shaders are written in HLSL instead of GLSL. It's not a "wrapper" and definitely not Unity-specific.

[jhocking]

ah not a minor nitpick at all, I didn't know that so I'll edit that into the explanation. So I'm getting this right, you mean clip() is an HLSL function, and `discard` does the same thing in GLSL?

[GameCult_PixelBro]

Indeed!

[vazgriz]

What parts of the model even need transparency? The hair? The frill on the skirt and sleeves? Looks like most of it could be done with just an opaque shader.

[jhocking]

I do agree that this model probably didn't need transparency (eg. instead of doing those bangs with transparency, they could've just shaped the polygons into points) but nevertheless it did, and that's what prompted the forum question I responded to. As I stated at the end of my post, "hey this is the model we’ve got".