Alpha Transparency:
To enable alpha blending, we add the flag to our effect file as shown below
return
{
Effect =
{
VertexShaderLocation = "Shaders/Vertex/standard.shader",
FragmentShaderLocation = "Shaders/Fragment/standard.shader",
VertexInputLayoutShaderLocation = "Shaders/Vertex/vertexInputLayout.shader",
AlphaTransparency = "true",
DepthBuffering = "true",
},
}
After adding alpha transparency, we need to make sure that we render all effects with transparency turned on before rendering meshes with it turned off. To enable that, I’ve changed my render commands, so that meshes with transparency which we call as dependent draw calls are drawn first and meshes with non transparent effects called independent draw calls are drawn after these.
Also, since if an effect is transparent is has to show what’s behind it. So, we draw dependent draw calls from back to front instead of front to back as we do with other draw calls. Below is a screenshot of transparent meshes being rendered and a video of the order in which they are being rendered.
