A Survey of Real-Time Hard Shadow Mapping Methods

Abstract

Because of its versatility, speed and robustness, shadow mapping has always been a popular algorithm for fast hard shadow generation since its introduction in 1978, first for offline film productions and later increasingly so in real-time graphics. So it is not surprising that recent years have seen an explosion in the number of shadow map related publications. Because of the abundance of articles on the topic, it has become very hard for practitioners and researchers to select a suitable shadow algorithm, and therefore many applications miss out on the latest high-quality shadow generation approaches. The goal of this survey is to rectify this situation by providing a detailed overview of this field. We show a detailed analysis of shadow mapping errors and derive a comprehensive classification of the existing methods. We discuss the most influential algorithms, consider their benefits and shortcomings and thereby provide the readers with the means to choose the shadow algorithm best suited to their needs.