Issues in plotting multiple transparent isosurfaces

Using R2015a

I made a script that plots several isosurfaces of different transparency. These surfaces are nested inside one another, such that the inner surfaces must be viewed through the outer surfaces. If I am plotting more than 5-6 surfaces, I find that the innermost surfaces cannot be seen, regardless of how low the alpha of the outer surfaces is. I suspect this issue is related to this blog post in some way: http://blogs.mathworks.com/graphics/2015/08/06/transparency-in-3d/.

Here are some images demonstrating the problem.

http://imgur.com/HNSpvL7

Here, I only plot 5 surfaces. These surfaces have increasing alpha depending on their isovalue. All the surfaces are visible.

If I add another surface between each of the 5 plotted above (again with the alpha depending on the isovalue), the inner surfaces are no longer visible. You can see 5 out of 9 surfaces plotted. Even though the innermost surface is completely opaque, it doesn't show up through the other surfaces. The transparency of the middle of each blob is much lower than when I only plot 5 isosurfaces.

http://imgur.com/WW82TTC

Are there any workarounds for this problem? Is there anything I can do to get MATLAB to show all of the isosurfaces? I have tried drawing the surfaces in increasing and decreasing order with identical results.

Some relevant code:

for i = 1:length(opt.Isosurfaces)
    fv = isosurface(x,y,t, abs(Exyt).^2, opt.Isosurfaces(i));
    if size(fv.faces) > 0
        patches = patch( shrinkfaces(fv,1.0) );
        isocolors(x,y,t, R,G,B, patches );
        patches.FaceColor = 'interp';
        patches.EdgeColor = 'none';
        patches.EdgeAlpha = 0.0;
        transp = opt.Transparency+(opt.Isosurfaces(i)-min(opt.Isosurfaces))^2*...
                (0.99-opt.Transparency)/(max(opt.Isosurfaces)-min(opt.Isosurfaces))^2;
        patches.FaceAlpha = transp;
        rotate( patches(1), [0 1 0], -90, [0 0 0] );
        rotate( patches(1), [1 0 0], -90, [0 0 0] );
    end 
end

Answer 1

[Slava Murzin]

I just had a similar issue. try setting:

ax=gca; ax.SortMethod='childorder';

[mrhodes]

That does seem to do the trick, thanks! It also introduces some unintended consequences when viewing the graph from other angles, but that's much easier to deal with.