Question

I am using Ardor3D for a 3D application in Java. I can draw a quad to the screen with a texture mapped to it. Part of the texture image is transparent, and the quad background shows through there.

How do you make the quad itself transparent, so the rendered scene will show through?

Answer 1

If your texture format supports an alpha channel (png, tga, dds, etc. but not jpg) then you just also need a BlendState. Something like:

    BlendState blend = new BlendState();
    blend.setBlendEnabled(true);
    myQuad.setRenderState(blend);

You may also want to place your quad into the Transparent render queue if your quad is partially transparent (an alpha in between 0% and 100%) to get the correct sorting:

    myQuad.getSceneHints().setRenderBucketType(RenderBucketType.Transparent);

There are other, non-alpha based ways to blend, but the above is usually what you want.