Efficient Ray Tracing of Gaussian Scenes and Semi-Transparent Surfaces

Develop efficient algorithms for ray tracing 3D Gaussian radiance fields and, more broadly, semi-transparent surfaces, achieving practical performance while preserving accurate image formation.

Background

The paper motivates a shift from rasterization to ray tracing for particle-based radiance fields to support complex cameras, secondary rays, and stochastic sampling. However, it explicitly notes that efficiently ray tracing Gaussian scenes and semi-transparent surfaces is not yet a solved problem, motivating the specialized algorithm introduced in the work.

Prior approaches for semi-transparent particles and volumes are cited as either ineffective on dense, non-uniform particle reconstructions or as relying on approximations that harm differentiability or quality, underscoring the need for more efficient and accurate methods.