GPUs are designed to do many things well, but drawing transparent 3D objects is not one of them. Opacity doesn't commute so that the order in which you draw surfaces makes a big difference. Of course simple additive blending does commute, but it's not really what we think of as "transparent objects". The simplest way to draw transparent objects is from back to front via the painter's algorithm. In this approach we sort geometry and draw only from back to front. This requires sorting triangles, which, in add
U. Martin Skrodzki, and K. Polthier. Proceedings of Bridges 2016: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Education, Culture, page 481--484. Phoenix, Arizona, Tessellations Publishing, (2016)Available online at http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2016/bridges2016-481.html.
R. Sharipov. (2004)cite arxiv:math/0405323Comment: The textbook, AmSTeX, 143 pages, amsppt style, prepared for double side printing on letter size paper.