found a way to (mostly) get transparencies to sort the way i want them to! it's a pain in the ass, and it occasionally randomly breaks and just won't do it...but sometimes, it works.

(this is in blender) so, short form: select out the faces you want to be "on top," separate those into a new object. out in object mode, select the new object you want on top first, then the other, join. last merged into a new object (mostly) sorts on top- so you can do it with a bunch of bits and merge them in order.

the edges will be unconnected- you can merge them back and SOMETIMES that doesn't screw things up. sometimes it does. loop cuts (and some other edit tools- flip normals doesn't seem to though) WILL screw all your sorting, so do your transparency sorting LAST

note that this only sorts faces consistently within a single texture face- each texture face is sorted as a separate "object" once in SL, so all the sorting in the world won't do anything for things across multiple faces, it picks which one is in front based on...the whim of the moment

it's also occasionally prone to wacky random "nah, don't feel like it" failure and the last merged won't go on top, but it does it right more often than not (but when i've hit one that won't, it just...won't. doesn't matter how many times i try it)

My usual method is to actually split the outer/front face to a separate mesh face entirely aka different texture and for some reason that works a lot better than the occasional jaggedy same transparent face overlapping itself issues (like you might get in a curtain)

Anke : it sorts separate faces in separate chunks- so you won't have the sorting issue the same way, it sorts it all one way or the other. that's the will always work way. but _mostly_ the separating out and merging back sorts the actual faces within a face (which always sorts the same- so once it's fucked, it's fucked)