Bart, I hope you're aware that Away3D has to use a flawed z-sorting algorithm for performance reasons. What you usually see for 3D graphics is a z-Buffer, where a depth is being calculated for each fragment (eg. pixel): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-buffering That is the way z-sorting works on a graphics-card.
Away3D on the other hand uses the painter's algorithm (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painter%27s_algorithm) for z-sorting (when using basic-renderer) which only uses mid-points of polygons for z-sorting. This algorithm is *much* faster, but has some obvious flaws (you can read them up in the wiki article). You can achieve better results by tweaking your geometry to be "painter's algorithm friendly" but even then you'll encounter a glitch eventually. The solution to the z-sorting problem lies within hardware- accelerated 3D graphics which will hopefully become a reality this year (see molehill). That being said, I hope you understand that a 3D rendering engine with some z-sorting flaws is better than no 3D-engine at all. Which were the only options at the time 1.0 came out... On Jan 15, 10:33 am, Bart <[email protected]> wrote: > I only started trying 3D in Flash this week and I'm surprised at how > often z-sorting goes wrong. Even with CORRECT_Z_ORDER. > > I'm as much amazed about the possibilities of this free engine as I am > about the z-sorting not working properly. > > I'm thinking: This is version 3.6 and still nobody else has found out > z-sorting is bugged terribly? I've ran into it on my first try without > anything working to fix it. If I had made Away3d (which I can't) I > definitely wouldn't have released version 1.0 without z-sorting always > working. Z-sorting is way more important than lights and textures in > my book. > > I'm both frustrated and excited about Away3d. It's a strange > combination. I hoped I was doing it wrong, but not by the sound of > this topic. I hope this gets fixed soon.
