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Abstract:
Shadows are crucial for enhancing realism, and they provide important visual
cues. In recent years, many important contributions have been made in
representation of both hard shadows and soft shadows. With the tremendous
increase of computational power and capabilities of graphics hardware,
high-quality real-time shadows are now a reachable goal. But with the growing
volume of available choices, it is particularly difficult to pick the right
solution and assess product shortcomings. Because currently there is no ideal
approach available, algorithms should be selected in accordance with the
context in which shadows are produced. The possibilities range across a wide
spectrum, from very approximate but really efficient to slower but accurate,
adapted only to smaller or only to larger sources, addressing directional
lights or positional lights, or involving GPU or CPU-heavy computations. This
course is a guide to better understanding of the limitations and failure cases,
advantages and disadvantages, and suitability of the algorithms for different
application scenarios. It focuses on real-time, interactive solutions but also
discusses offline approaches.
