graphics - Do I have to Z Sort or not?

Question

I have written a 3d model viewing program in vb.net, though the question is not language specific. Everything is working as expected though I have one issue. Partial transparency.

The program allows the user to make the entire model transparent via a checkbox and a slider that changes the alpha values for alpha blending. It also stops the zbuffer check.

This works fine when the model is very transperant but can induce more and more flicker during animation and render errors as the opacity increases. Which i'm guessing is due to out of z-order polygon rendering.

So the question is. Do I need to implement a Sort or painters algorithm for transperancey to work properly or is there any way to use the zbuffer & polygon location etc to avoid sorting everything?

Ps. This does not use api's. It's all software based rendering so OpenGl soloutions etc are no good.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65923764/do-i-have-to-z-sort-or-not

Answer 1

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