Wavelet Transparency

Abstract

Order-independent transparency schemes rely on low-order approximations of transmittance as a function of depth. We introduce a new wavelet representation of this function and an algorithm for building and evaluating it efficiently on a GPU. We then extend the order-independent Phenomenological Transparency algorithm to our representation and introduce a new phenomenological approximation of chromatic aberration under refraction. This generates comparable image quality to reference A-buffering for challenging cases such as smoke coverage, more realistic refraction, and comparable or better performance and bandwidth to the state-of-the-art Moment transparency with a simpler implementation.