Transparency issues: resolved?

This issue arose when I was trying to bring import objects with transparent textures. The objects would either block any other objects behind it, or it might appear behind the object even though the object is clearly behind.



Clearly there's an issue here. After taking a look at other illusion maps and seeing how they did it, I seem to be getting closer to a solution


I looked at sexy beach zero's maps because they had a lot of trees and plants where the meshes were simply huge rectangles with a texture drawn over it to look like a tree.



But as you can see, there is no problem...



So why am I having problems? I made a map out of a single cage and the problem still arises:



But upon closer inspection, I noticed the hex strings for those tree meshes looked like this:

4C-64-00-00 00-00-00-00 80-00-00-00 00-00-00-00



The first byte deals with transparency, the second byte I'm still not sure, but notice the 80 on the 9th byte? I've never set anything for that particular value, so I thought I would try it out.

End result? It seems to be doing something:



So one solution is

1st byte = 4C
9th byte = 80

Maybe someone can clarify what they actually do.