# TransparentGS: Fast Inverse Rendering of Transparent Objects with Gaussians

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.18768 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18768/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [GaussianShader: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Shading Functions for Reflective Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17977/) (2023)
- [GS-IR: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Inverse Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16473/) (2023)
- [NeRO: Neural Geometry and BRDF Reconstruction of Reflective Objects from Multiview Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17398/) (2023)
- [Relightable 3D Gaussians: Realistic Point Cloud Relighting with BRDF Decomposition and Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16043/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Ray Tracing: Fast Tracing of Particle Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07090/) (2024)
- [Recent Advances in 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11134/) (2024)
- [NeILF++: Inter-Reflectable Light Fields for Geometry and Material Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17147/) (2023)
- [Ref-NeuS: Ambiguity-Reduced Neural Implicit Surface Learning for Multi-View Reconstruction with Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10840/) (2023)
- [ENVIDR: Implicit Differentiable Renderer with Neural Environment Lighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13022/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting with Deferred Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18454/) (2024)
- [On the Error Analysis of 3D Gaussian Splatting and an Optimal Projection Strategy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00752/) (2024)
- [Eikonal Fields for Refractive Novel-View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00948/) (2022)
- [TensoSDF: Roughness-aware Tensorial Representation for Robust Geometry and Material Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02771/) (2024)
- [Full 3D Reconstruction of Transparent Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.03482/) (2018)
- [Differentiable Refraction-Tracing for Mesh Reconstruction of Transparent Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09144/) (2020)
- [Hybrid Mesh-neural Representation for 3D Transparent Object Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12613/) (2022)
- [Unified Gaussian Primitives for Scene Representation and Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09733/) (2024)
- [NeTO:Neural Reconstruction of Transparent Objects with Self-Occlusion Aware Refraction-Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11219/) (2023)
- [Polarimetric Inverse Rendering for Transparent Shapes Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.11836/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [GeoSVR: Taming Sparse Voxels for Geometrically Accurate Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18090/) (2025)
- [TRAN-D: 2D Gaussian Splatting-based Sparse-view Transparent Object Depth Reconstruction via Physics Simulation for Scene Update](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11069/) (2025)
- [Mono4DGS-HDR: High Dynamic Range 4D Gaussian Splatting from Alternating-exposure Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18489/) (2025)
- [RT-Splatting: Joint Reflection-Transmission Modeling with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18263/) (2026)
- [RefRef: A Dataset and Benchmark for Reconstructing Refractive and Reflective Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05848/) (2025)
- [ComGS: Efficient 3D Object-Scene Composition via Surface Octahedral Probes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07729/) (2025)
- [Fix False Transparency by Noise Guided Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15736/) (2025)
- [GTSR: Subsurface Scattering Awared 3D Gaussians for Translucent Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22036/) (2026)
- [RT-GS: Gaussian Splatting with Reflection and Transmittance Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00509/) (2026)
- [TransmissiveGS: Residual-Guided Disentangled Gaussian Splatting for Transmissive Scene Reconstruction and Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10705/) (2026)
- [Revisiting Photometric Ambiguity for Accurate Gaussian-Splatting Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12494/) (2026)
- [SPAGS: Sparse-View Articulated Object Reconstruction from Single State via Planar Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17092/) (2025)
- [DiffTrans: Differentiable Geometry-Materials Decomposition for Reconstructing Transparent Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00413/) (2026)
- [PhyGaP: Physically-Grounded Gaussians with Polarization Cues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14001/) (2026)
- [RefracGS: Novel View Synthesis Through Refractive Water Surfaces with 3D Gaussian Ray Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21695/) (2026)
- [GLINT: Modeling Scene-Scale Transparency via Gaussian Radiance Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26181/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The emergence of neural and Gaussian-based radiance field methods has led to considerable advancements in novel view synthesis and 3D object reconstruction. Nonetheless, specular reflection and refraction continue to pose significant challenges due to the instability and incorrect overfitting of radiance fields to high-frequency light variations. Currently, even 3D Gaussian Splatting (3D-GS), as a powerful and efficient tool, falls short in recovering transparent objects with nearby contents due to the existence of apparent secondary ray effects. To address this issue, we propose TransparentGS, a fast inverse rendering pipeline for transparent objects based on 3D-GS. The main contributions are three-fold. Firstly, an efficient representation of transparent objects, transparent Gaussian primitives, is designed to enable specular refraction through a deferred refraction strategy. Secondly, we leverage Gaussian light field probes (GaussProbe) to encode both ambient light and nearby contents in a unified framework. Thirdly, a depth-based iterative probes query (IterQuery) algorithm is proposed to reduce the parallax errors in our probe-based framework. Experiments demonstrate the speed and accuracy of our approach in recovering transparent objects from complex environments, as well as several applications in computer graphics and vision.