3DSMax viewport alpha sorting

Rick Stirling

Hey all - I know that Max has had issues for a long time with sorting overlapping alpha in the viewport on the same object, and wondered if anyone had managed to get a good solution to this?

Working on some hair at the minute and I don't relish detaching each strand to a unique object.

disanski

Hey Rick. I have not done this yet but I read about it somewhere...so they don't have to be separate objects. You still have to detach them all and attach them back to the main object, but whatever is attached last, sorts first.
I hope this helps.

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, they generally render in the vertex-creation order. Some more here.
http://wiki.polycount.net/Opacity_Map#SortingFixes

Rick Stirling

Aye, but with several hundred strands that's a pain in the tits

What about a punchthrough alpha shader?

Eric Chadwick

You mean "Alpha Test" I think? No sorting problems there, but it looks like ass.

Rick Stirling

Aye, nowhere near as nice, but would allow me to edit the strands in realtime.

Eric Chadwick

Have you tried the different transparency viewport modes (Best/Simple/None)

Rick Stirling

yup, all of those.

Xoliul

It works fine if you use software map display (the standard "show map in viewport"). If you start using hardware display/shaders, it goes wrong.