Shadows

[renanse]

A new shadow map pass is in our ardor3d-effects pass, courtesy Rikard and myself. This one implements the PSSM technique, which improves the quality of shadowmaps by breaking them into sections along the camera frustum. Have a look at the example (com.ardor3d.example.effect.ParallelSplitShadowMapExample) for a fun test complete with several debugging options.

Note: this new PSSM pass will likely replace the existing shadowmap pass.

[renanse]

fyi, I put up a few screen shots on my blog here:

http://blog.renanse.com/2009/03/improve ... dor3d.html

[jfelrod1960]

Question: Would this technique be used when the light direction remains static, but the object is moving in various directions causing the shadow to change?

Excellent work BTW! :thumbsup:

[jfelrod1960]

Never mind ... I noticed the moving Torus in the demo.

[nymon]

Beautiful! I've been waiting for this. Great work guys, and kudos for sticking to the roadmap.

One thing that I think is missing from the PSSM pass is a way to remove an occluder without having to clear them all out and re-add the ones you want.

[MrCoder]

Just added in support for setting shadowcolor/transparency, support for 4 splits and some example fixes etc. I'll add in some support for occluder changes.

Next up i think i'll split up the shaders so they only work on the number of splits used, for better performance in lower split counts...

If I had a better laptop I could add in support for variance shadow maps :/

[renanse]

If I had a better laptop I could add in support for variance shadow maps :/

Hint hint...

[MrCoder]

...and my paypal account number is ...

[nymon]

Any plans on implementing (or porting) stencil shadows in the near future?

[MrCoder]

If you want us to, we'll do it! (iow, no that wasnt on any near future plan, for me at least)