been a month or so since anything has actually been updated on the project, unfortunately it has once again taken a back seat to more pressing concerns. there were a few noteworthy undocumented moments from the month prior, however it turns out, i was sort of going in the wrong direction for quite some time, in the way i was handling transparency and transmission. thanks to an accidental discovery, i now know the transmit AOVs checkbox is capable of rendering the transmission as transparency to the alpha channel. the problem, was in the settings for the global illumination sphere i was using