{{Verification|date=December 2022}}{{Short description|Rendering method for order-independent transparency}} In computer graphics, '''depth peeling''' is an exact multipass method of order-independent transparency that extracts transparent fragments into depth layers and composites those layers in depth order.<ref name="Everitt">{{cite web | url=http://developer.download.nvidia.com/assets/gamedev/docs/OrderIndependentTransparency.pdf | title=Interactive Order-Independent Transparency | date=2001-05-15 | publisher=Nvidia | first=Cass | last=Everitt | accessdate=2008-10-12}}</ref> Depth peeling has the advantage of being able to generate correct results even for complex images containing intersecting transparent objects.
== Method == Depth peeling works by rendering the image multiple times.<ref name="Everitt" /> Depth peeling uses two Z buffers, one that works conventionally, and one that is not modified, and sets the ''minimum'' distance at which a fragment can be drawn without being discarded. For each pass, the previous pass' conventional Z-buffer is used as the minimal Z-buffer, so each pass removes already-captured nearer fragments and draws the next depth layer behind them.<ref name="Everitt" /> The resulting images can then be composited in depth order to form a single image.<ref name="Everitt" /> A major drawback of classical depth peeling is performance: it requires one geometry pass per peeled layer, so scenes with high depth complexity require many passes that each re-rasterize the transparent geometry.<ref name="Bavoil">{{cite web | url=https://developer.download.nvidia.com/SDK/10/opengl/src/dual_depth_peeling/doc/DualDepthPeeling.pdf | title=Order Independent Transparency with Dual Depth Peeling | publisher=Nvidia | first=Louis | last=Bavoil | first2=Kevin | last2=Myers | accessdate=2026-05-20}}</ref><ref name="Liu">{{cite web | url=https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/tr-2006-81.pdf | title=Multi-Layer Depth Peeling via Fragment Sort | publisher=Microsoft Research | first=Baoquan | last=Liu | first2=Li-Yi | last2=Wei | first3=Ying-Qing | last3=Xu | accessdate=2026-05-20}}</ref> Later variants reduce the number of passes by peeling multiple layers or both front and back layers in a pass.<ref name="Bavoil" /><ref name="Liu" /> Dual depth peeling reduces the geometry-pass count from ''N'' to ''N''/2+1 by peeling one layer from the front and one from the back in each pass, while multi-layer depth peeling peels several layers per pass and reported up to an 8x speed-up in RGBA8 settings.<ref name="Bavoil" /><ref name="Liu" />
==References== {{Reflist}}
Category:Computer graphics
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