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DirectX11 and Transparency

Discussion in 'Developer Preview Archive' started by RyuMaster, Sep 16, 2012.

  1. RyuMaster

    RyuMaster

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    Hi! Unity 4 will support directX11, and I know that directX11 has order independent transparency. That will help to render hair correctly.
    Will that feature be available outside-the-box, or some shader will need to be written to utilize it?
     
    RyuMaster, Sep 16, 2012
    #1

  2. Aras

    Aras

    Unity Technologies

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    DX11 does not have order independent transparency. But with DX11 feature set available at hand (in this case, UAVs, atomics and compute shaders), you could implement order independent transparency. That would be expensive, but order independent.

    We won't be providing that out of the box, but yes, you (or anyone else) could do it. Why not out of the box? Because currently it's more in "fancy R&D" area IMHO - it's nice, it works, but it's both complex to implement and not very practical to use (yet) performance wise.
     
    Aras, Sep 16, 2012
    #2

  3. RyuMaster

    RyuMaster

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    Got it! Thank you for the detailed explanation
     
    RyuMaster, Sep 17, 2012
    #3

  4. phixell

    phixell

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    If order independent transparency is not supported out of the box. Is there a solution in the box? I am aware of the extra triangle hack, is there a better way?
     
    phixell, Oct 26, 2012
    #4

  5. smb02dunnal

    smb02dunnal

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    Extra triangle hack?
     
    smb02dunnal, Oct 29, 2012
    #5

  6. alexandre-fiset

    alexandre-fiset

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    alexandre-fiset, Oct 29, 2012
    #6

  7. phixell

    phixell

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    You add a tiny triangle (too small to be seen) to the object, move it out from the object to increase its bounding box size so it will get sorted properly.
     
    phixell, Oct 29, 2012
    #7

  8. smb02dunnal

    smb02dunnal

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    Ah fair enough, so does Unity use the center of the bounding box to alpha sort then?
     
    smb02dunnal, Oct 30, 2012
    #8