Multi-pass apparatus and method for ray tracing shading. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: graphics processing circuitry to execute a sequence of visibility testing operations related to texels within a texture domain to generate visibility results; a register or memory to store a texel mask; texel mask update circuitry/logic to update the texel mask based on the visibility results, the texel mask comprising a plurality of bits to indicate visibility of the texels within the texture domain, the texel mask update circuitry/logic to set a first bit to indicate whether any bits in the texel mask indicate a visible texel; a shader dispatcher to initiate conditional dispatch operations only if the first bit is set to indicate that at least one bit in the texel mask indicates a visible texel, wherein to perform the conditional dispatch operations, the shader dispatcher is to dispatch texel shaders for only those texels that the texel mask indicates may be visible; and a plurality of execution units (EUs) to execute the shaders dispatched by the shader dispatcher.