Rick McGlenister

@Anon Ymus
Thanks.

@ Anon Ymus
Ok, I just took my observation as an extension of this issue.

Since my observation seems to be 'opposed' to the 977 issue would you recommend that I post there? Or rather that I should start a new issue?

@zombie_hunter
The core of my observations is that the render order is broken for clouds, as well as particle etc.. I do not agree that cloud bottoms are solid so never searched for 'cloud transparency' issue.

I believe my screenshot showed that clouds are transparent on the bottom, but when viewed from too far below appear to be solid because the render order is wrong. I did not make this clear, the sun or moon or stars are always visible through the clouds (would say sky as well but this can only be inferred). Hence; clouds are transparent on all sides.

The reason for the apparent solidity of the cloud bottoms is that the render order is broken. Instead of the render order being cloud - mountain - sun - sky it is cloud - sun - sky - mountain, and since the sky is not transparent you can't see the mountain through the cloud so the bottom "appears" solid. The exact same thing happens during the night ie the mountain rendered incorrectly at the back of the list.

The keys to this are the sun, moon, and stars all of which are visible through the cloud bottom. If the cloud bottom was not transparent you would not see them.

Screenshot info: created in plain MC 1.7.2, in creative mode, in an AMPLIFIED world (seed -7693758492202460580), location x:2387, Y:-3568. In a default world, in survival, with same seed the same effects can be seen.

I believe clouds are still transparent, they just don't look that way from the ground. This is because there is also an issue with the z-depth rendering between the clouds and sky at certain angles.

When looked at from above you can see the ground thru them (easily checked in AMPLIFIED world. But when you get below the clouds they 'look' solid because you are seeing the cloud + sky rendered together. At night you can see the stars in the cloud and if you get the cloud in front of a tall mountain you will still see the stars and even the moon as well. It is not as obvious in the daytime until you get the sun involved as the sky and cloud are so similar in color.

Looking at the four screenshots I attached 2 - is in the cloud and it is transparent and can still see the mountain, 3 is just a little bit below the cloud and it is still transparent, but 4 - when dropping just a little bit more below the cloud the sky and cloud combine so you can no longer see the mountain but can see the sky and sun (which is behind the mountain, you can see the halo in pic 1).

Sorry, this is my low-res texture test.

My entire resource pack is 25mb so cant' attach. I trimmed it down to just the zombie folder.

You will note that the texture is hi-res, however I do not run a true HD texture pack, nor do I mod MC with HD texture mod. Minecraft has always allowed (since I first started playing, around beta 1.2) mob textures, and some others, to be hi-res (while the balance, like blocks, remain 16bit) as long as the texture proportions were correct.

Writing this I just considered the (slim) possibility that this may be causal so reduced the texture to normal size (64x64) and tested this normal sized texture in vanilla MC 1.6.2 with same results.

Included my texture, as seen in first pics. A new low res version of said texture and a couple of pics of this low-res texture in action.

Note how in the one pic one of the zombies is wearing hi-res armor. Armour is another one of those textures that can be any size in non-modded MC.