David Yazel wrote:

> Decal groups seme to have an artifact that I can't seem to get around.  If I
> am alpha blending between terrain layers java3d is still rendering the the
> alpha blended layers in the transparency pass at the end of the rendering
> cycle, even if these layers are in a decal group.

This is my understanding of how java3d's transparency sorting routine
works. Anything that has alpha in the geometry is separated out to
another list and is rendered independently of the underlying geometry.

> any way to force these to be blended in multiple passes in the solid
> rendering portion?

Not that I've aware of.

> Secondly, would it be possible to pile them all into texture units within
> the same shape and then use combine (somehow) to achieve the same effect?

Typically this is the better way of doing it. All modern video cards
support at least 2 texture units so you should be able to do this
relatively easily. However, to keep performance up, you might want make
sure that the rendering doesn't drop back to multipass texture
combinations, which J3D will do if you use more TextureUnitStates than
the hardware supports. To avoid this, query the browser properties and
then if you find it has 2 or less, do your own alpha compositing of the
textures using Java2D. I'd recommend combining the two detail textures
together assuming you weren't doing them for different visual effects
like bump mapping & shadow/light mapping.

--
Justin Couch                         http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/
Java Architect & Bit Twiddler              http://www.yumetech.com/
Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer                  http://www.j3d.org/
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