Efficient Real-Time Shadows

This course provides an overview of efficient, real-time shadow algorithms. It presents the theoretical background but also discusses implementation details for facilitating efficient realizations (hard and soft shadows, volumetric shadows, reconstruction techniques). These elements are of relevance to both experts and practitioners. The course also reviews budget considerations and analyzes performance trade-offs, using examples from various AAA game titles and film previsualization tools. While physical accuracy can sometimes be replaced by plausible shadows, especially for games, film production requires more pecision, such as scalable solutions that can deal with highly detailed geometry. The course builds upon earlier SIGGRAPH courses as well as the recent book Real-Time Shadows (A K Peters, 2011) by four of the instructors (due to its success, a second edition is planned for 2014). And with two instructors who have worked on AAA game and movie titles, the course presents interesting behindthe-scenes information that illuminates key topics.

@InProceedings { EASVW13,
  author       = "Eisemann, Elmar and Assarsson, Ulf and Schwarz, Michael and Valient, Michal  and Wimmer, Michael",
  title        = "Efficient Real-Time Shadows",
  booktitle    = "ACM SIGGRAPH - Course",
  year         = "2013",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2013/EASVW13"
}