I am using opengl to render sprites, using an orthographic projection.

Each sprite has a position: (x, y, z). I need to be able to set the order of rendering, so that certain sprites are rendered on top of the others. For this reason, I also have a z value in the position;

The rendering pseudocode looks like this:

Renderer.begin(camera.projection)
Renderer.draw(sprite1)
Renderer.draw(sprite2)
...
Renderer.end()

For the correct layering of sprites, I would need to sort them by their position.z value.

I would love to find a way around that: I plan to extend my system so that sprites can have custom materials, which will use custom shaders. Therefore, I would like to sort by their material index, in order to minimize shader switches;

Is there a way to utilize the depth buffer in order to make the layering work, so that I can just sort by material index?

I am using OpenGL to render sprites, using an orthographic projection.

Each sprite has a position: (x, y, z). I need to be able to set the order of rendering, so that certain sprites are rendered on top of the others. For this reason, I also have a z value in the position;

The rendering pseudocode looks like this:

Renderer.begin(camera.projection)
Renderer.draw(sprite1)
Renderer.draw(sprite2)
...
Renderer.end()

For the correct layering of sprites, I would need to sort them by their position.z value.

I would love to find a way around that: I plan to extend my system so that sprites can have custom materials, which will use custom shaders. Therefore, I would like to sort by their material index, in order to minimize shader switches.

Is there a way to utilize the depth buffer in order to make the layering work, so that I can just sort by material index?

I am using opengl to render sprites, using an orthographic projection.

Each sprite has a position: (x, y, z). I need to be able to set the order of rendering, so that certain sprites are rendered on top of the others. For this reason, I also have a z value in the position;

The rendering pseudocode looks like this:

Renderer.begin(camera.projection) Renderer.draw(sprite1) Renderer.draw(sprite2) ... Renderer.end()

For the correct layering of sprites, I would need to sort them by their position.z value.

I would love to find a way around that: I plan to extend my system so that sprites can have custom materials, which will use custom shaders. Therefore, I would like to sort by their material index, in order to minimize shader switches;

Is there a way to utilize the depth buffer in order to make the layering work, so that I can just sort by material index?

I am using opengl to render sprites, using an orthographic projection.

Each sprite has a position: (x, y, z). I need to be able to set the order of rendering, so that certain sprites are rendered on top of the others. For this reason, I also have a z value in the position;

The rendering pseudocode looks like this:

Renderer.begin(camera.projection)
Renderer.draw(sprite1)
Renderer.draw(sprite2)
...
Renderer.end()

For the correct layering of sprites, I would need to sort them by their position.z value.

I would love to find a way around that: I plan to extend my system so that sprites can have custom materials, which will use custom shaders. Therefore, I would like to sort by their material index, in order to minimize shader switches;

Is there a way to utilize the depth buffer in order to make the layering work, so that I can just sort by material index?