Transparency is a troublesome topic for realtime rendering. As previously mentioned, transparent materials don't have the luxury of being properly sorted, and there is currently no ideal solution to resolve the sorting of transparent materials in a realtime context.
There are many options for resolving transparency sorting problems while maintaining a transparent look:
- Switching to a Cutout material. Many material situations actually don't warrant a transparent shader. Foliage (leaves, grasses, and plants) is often treated as cutout. Take a close look at other games and see if you can utilise the same technique.
- Use dithering. Dithered materials are cutout materials that create an effective gradient of transparency whilst never actually being transparent. This is achieved by a screen-space per-pixel mask that can be appealing, or disguised via anti-aliasing solutions.
- Render Queue. Forcing the draw order of a material. This only solves inter-material rendering issues.
- Writing to Depth. Forcing a material to define its depth in space, at the cost of appearing solid to transparent objects that try to render behind it afterwards.
- If the issues are in one mesh only and not between objects, sometimes strategically separating portions of the mesh can result in a consistent viewing experience where each of the new object's centers will be correctly sorted.
Unity, huh, how?