Why does full transparency cost performance?( opacity masks)

Development Rendering
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1

It’s just a technical question I’m wondering about for a while now. Since I’m no programmer by any means I’m just asking why is it that full transparency costs performance? I can understand that half transparency and everything inbetween has to calculate all of the overlaps but I’m always feeling like I’m wasting performance when using opacity masks(0, 1 values, cutouts)
Is it still calculating something in the background?

I’m just curious, I guess it’s something that can’t be worked around?
Also is it as performance heavy as using half transparency or a bit less performance intensive?

Hopefully it’s not a stupid question. But from my perspective it makes no sense for it to have as much of an impact as half transparency…

2

I wanted to know the same exact thing! :slight_smile:

3

When you are using masked materials, pixels, that are covered by opaque pixels, are skipped, provided that early z pass is enabled. For transparent parts, you are paying full cost of current pixels plus everything behind them.

For translucent materials, you are always paying full cost of current pixel plus background.