Transparent textures don't show

Question

EDIT For now, I'm going to accept Brett's answer. It's a way to get transparency back by having 3D calculations done in software instead of hardware. It addresses the symptoms but not the causes. As I wrote above, my PC and graphics card are provably able to do it, but there's something in the interaction with MMA that disables it after restarts. Anyone who solves this gets the Accept check.

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Edit I got conformations from several users with the following hardware:

• Simon Woods: Windows 7 64 bit, with an NVidia GTX 550 Ti graphics card.
• texasAUtiger: Windows 7, 64 bit on Intel on Intel iCore i7-2760QM 2.4 ghz, NVidia NVS 4200M graphics card

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I have this problem where several of the examples in the doc page of Texture don't work.

data = Table[{1, 0, 0, a}, {u, 0, 1, 1/100}, {a, 0, 1, 1/100}];

vtc = {{0, 0}, {1, 0}, {1, 1}, {0, 1}};
coords = {{{0, 0, 0}, {0, 1, 0}, {1, 1, 0}, {1, 0, 0}}, {{0, 0, 
     0}, {1, 0, 0}, {1, 0, 1}, {0, 0, 1}}, {{1, 0, 0}, {1, 1, 0}, {1, 
     1, 1}, {1, 0, 1}}, {{1, 1, 0}, {0, 1, 0}, {0, 1, 1}, {1, 1, 
     1}}, {{0, 1, 0}, {0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 1}, {0, 1, 1}}, {{0, 0, 
     1}, {1, 0, 1}, {1, 1, 1}, {0, 1, 1}}};

Graphics3D[{Texture[data], 
  Polygon[coords, VertexTextureCoordinates -> Table[vtc, {6}]]}, 
 Lighting -> "Neutral", Boxed -> False]

is supposed to give:

but I get this:

data1 = Table[{1, 2/3, 0, If[u^2 + v^2 < 1/2, 0, 1]}, {u, -1, 1, 
    1/100}, {v, -1, 1, 1/100}];
data2 = Table[{0, 0, 1, If[u^2 + v^2 < 1/2, 0, 1]}, {u, -1, 1, 
    1/100}, {v, -1, 1, 1/100}];

Additionally,

Graphics3D[{FaceForm[Texture[data1], Texture[data2]], 
  Polygon[coords, VertexTextureCoordinates -> Table[vtc, {6}]]}, 
 Lighting -> "Neutral", Boxed -> False]

should yield:

but I get the empty cube again.

Then there's the example in the Scope>Texture styling section of the doc page which is supposed to result in:

In my case I get:

.

This is not a general transparency issue as

Plot3D[x^4 + y^4 - 5 x^2*y^2, {x, -3, 3}, {y, -3, 3}, 
 PlotStyle -> Opacity[0.8], Mesh -> None]

gives me this:

I'm using a 1 year old Dell XPS-15 (model L501 X)Running Windows 7-64 with an nVidia GeForce GT 435M graphics card, driver version 8.17.12.6639.

I reported this earlier on Mathgroup and got the advice to update my drivers which I did and it sure helped. However this is not the end of the story as the behavior returned soon afterwards.

I have updated the driver various times using both nVidia's and Dell's newest version and it always was a short-lived solution. Last time I tested it, I installed the same version of the driver over the existing one and the transparent textures showed up as intended in my notebook even without re-executing the code, only to disappear after MMA's next restart.

So, apparently my system is able to handle transparent textures but there is some interaction between MMA and the driver that causes this ability to be switched off.

Update

This issue seems to have been resolved in Mathematica 9. All of the above mentioned problems did not reappear when I tested them in the trial version of V9.

Answer 1

Go into the option inspector, and try the different settings for Graphics Options > RenderingOptions > "Graphics3DRenderingEngine and see if that has any effect.

Edit This option can be set on a per-graphic basis, say by using Style:

AbsoluteTiming[
   Rasterize[
    Style[Graphics3D[{Opacity[0.1], 
       Sphere[{0, 0, 0}, #] & /@ Range[20]}, ImageSize -> 200], 
     RenderingOptions -> {"Graphics3DRenderingEngine" -> #}]]] & /@
{"BSPTree", "HardwareDepthBuffer"}