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Multi-layer depth peeling via fragment sort

  • Baoquan Liu
    ,
  • Li-Yi Wei
    ,
  • Ying-Qing Xu
    ,
  • Enhua Wu
  • University of Macau
Research Output:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
Conference contribution
 Peer-review

Abstract

We present an accelerated depth peeling algorithm for order-independent transparency rendering on graphics hardware. Unlike traditional depth peeling which only peels one layer of transparent pixels per rendering pass, our algorithm peels multiple layers simultaneously per rendering pass. Our acceleration is achieved via our fragment program which sorts and writes multiple fragment colors and depths via MRT. A notable feature of our algorithm is that it is robust against the unreliable parallel read-after-write behavior in current graphics hardware, guaranteeing correct transparency ordering. For ordinary scenes rendered under RGBA8 color precision, we achieve up to 8x speed-up over conventional depth peeling with current generation graphics hardware. Our algorithm is simple to implement on current GPU without any hardware modification. In addition, it does not require applications to perform any pre-sorting of transparent geometry.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output:
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
Conference contribution
 Peer-review

Original language

English

Publication milestones

  • Published - 18/09/2009

Publication status

Published - 18/09/2009

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., United States

ISBN (Print)

9781424436996

ISBN (Electronic)

9781424436996

Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/281414
  • Scopus: 70449412531

Host publication title

nan

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