Linear time shadow texture genration algorithm

초록

Shadows are important components in enhancing the reality of synthetic images. However, shadows are not used frequently used in real-time rendering since rendering shadows is so time consuming. Texture-based method has been devised for more efficient shadow generation. If we represent shadow as a texture image, it can be rendered with graphics hardware. In the past, the texture-based shadow generation has been regarded as inadequate for rendering complex scenes in real time due to inefficiency of the process. In this paper we propose a shadow texture algorithm that can be used in real-time rendering. Unlike the previous methods, it can generate shadow texture in a time that linearly proportional to scene complexity. In addition, objects totally obscured from light sources are identified and not processed. These features make it possible to reduce shadow texture generation time as well as required memory.