OpenGL (ES) Model Within Translucent Model - opengl-es

Question

I want "Face In a Crystal Ball" effect where I have a model (the face) doing things inside of a translucent model (the crystal ball). I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because I just can't get this inner face to show up partially occluded by the ball. My goal is to vary the alpha of the ball (and/or face) to make the face appear and disappear.
Below is the relevant bits code. As you'll see, I'm not using shaders, just good old GL/GLES1. If anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'll be VERY appreciative.
The setup code...
//-- CONFIGURATION ---------------
// Create The Depth Buffer Object
glGenRenderbuffersOES(1, &depth_renderbuffer);
glBindRenderbufferOES(GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES, depth_renderbuffer);
glRenderbufferStorageOES(GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES,
GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT16_OES,
width,
height);
// Create The FrameBuffer Object
glGenFramebuffersOES(1, &framebuffer);
glBindFramebufferOES(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES, framebuffer);
glFramebufferRenderbufferOES(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES,
GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0_OES,
GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES,
color_renderbuffer);
glFramebufferRenderbufferOES(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_OES,
GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT_OES,
GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES,
depth_renderbuffer);
// Bind Color Buffer
glBindRenderbufferOES(GL_RENDERBUFFER_OES, color_renderbuffer);
glViewport(0, 0, width, height);
//-- LIGHTING ----------------------
glEnable(GL_LIGHTING);
glEnable(GL_LIGHT0);
//-- PROJECTION ---------------------
glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
viewport_size = vec2((float) width,(float) height);
//Orthographic Projection
float max_x,max_y;
if(width>height){
max_y = 1;
max_x = (float)width/(float)height;
}
else{
max_x = 1;
max_y = (float)height/(float) width;
}
const float MAX_X = max_x;
const float MAX_Y = max_y;
const float Z_0 = 0;
const float MAX_Z = 1;
glOrthof(-MAX_X, MAX_X, -MAX_Y, MAX_Y, Z_0-MAX_Z, Z_0+MAX_Z);
world_size = vec3(2*MAX_X,2*MAX_Y,2*MAX_Z);
//Color Depth
glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST);
glDepthMask(GL_TRUE); //Dissapears if False
glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL);
glEnable(GL_BLEND);
//glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); //doesn't do it
glBlendFunc(GL_ONE, GL_ONE); //better
Here is the rendering call
glClearColor(world->background_color.x,
world->background_color.y,
world->background_color.z,
world->background_color.w);
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);
for(int s=0;s<surfaces.size();s++){
Surface* surface = surface[s];
glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_AMBIENT, surface->getMatAmbient().Pointer());
glMaterialfv(GL_FRONT_AND_BACK, GL_DIFFUSE, surface->getMatDiffuse().Pointer());
glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
//If I don't put this code in here (as opposed to above), the light gets all crazy! WHY!?
glPushMatrix();
glLoadIdentity();
vec4 light_position = vec4(world->light->position,1);
glLightfv(GL_LIGHT0,GL_POSITION,light_position.Pointer());
glPopMatrix();
glPushMatrix();
glMultMatrixf(surface->transform.Pointer());
glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, surface->index_buffer);
glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, surface->vertex_buffer);
glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY);
glEnableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY);
glVertexPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, VERTEX_STRIDE, 0);
glNormalPointer(GL_FLOAT, VERTEX_STRIDE, (GLvoid*) VERTEX_NORMAL_OFFSET);
glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, surface->indices.size(), GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0);
glDisableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY);
glDisableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY);
glPopMatrix();
}

Answer 1

It sounds like you may be suffering from a simple case of the concept of a depth buffer not really applying to your scene. A depth buffer stores one depth for every pixel on screen, which in a scene with fully opaque objects would be the depth of the nearest object at that pixel.
The problem is that when you want to add partially transparent objects to the scene, you end up in a position where several objects contribute to the colour of an individual pixel. But you can still store the depth of only one of them.
So what's probably happening in your case is that you're drawing the crystal ball first, and that's putting the depths of the various crystal ball pixels into the depth buffer. You're then attempting to draw the face and OpenGL is seeing that it's further away than the values already in the buffer, so skipping those pixels.
So the quick-fix solution is just to re-order your scene geometry by hand such that the face is always drawn before the crystal ball, being always on the inside.
In an ideal solution, you'd draw all opaque geometry in one step (traditionally in something close to front-to-back order, though that's not as important on the PowerVR) to establish opaque depth values, then all transparent geometry back to front so that it is composited in the correct order.
In OpenGL you really want the order of certain things to be relatively fixed so that you can push the relevant values over to the GPU and not incur communications costs. People still tend to divide into opaque and transparent geometry and draw opaque first but often they'll just then disable z-buffer writes when they draw the transparent geometry, making an effort to do it something a bit like back-to-front order but not investing too much time in the problem.
If you're happy to use purely additive blending then clearly any order drawing for the transparencies is correct once the depth buffer has the opaque stuff set up.

Answer 2

What order are you rendering the objects? If you draw the ball before the face, then the entire face will get rejected because it is behind the ball in the z-buffer. If you want to do correct transparency, you have to render objects from back to front.
And regarding your inline question:
//If I don't put this code in here (as opposed to above), the light gets all crazy! WHY!?
When you call glLightfv with a position, the position is transformed by what's currently in the modelview matrix stack. You have to put it in the right place relative to what frame of reference you're defining the coordinates (is it relative to the view coordinates, or to the world coordinates, or to the object coordinates?).