MIT EECS 6.

837
Computer Graphics

Wojciech Matusik

A cartoon has been removed due to copyright restrictions.

Real-Time
Shadows
MIT EECS 6.837 – Durand
1
Why are Shadows Important?
• Depth cue
• Scene
Lighting
• Realism
• Contact Image removed due to copyright restrictions.

points

2
Shadows as a Depth Cue

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3
 Shadows as the Origin of Painting

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4
Shadow in Ray Tracing
• Trace secondary (shadow) rays towards each
light source
• If the closest hit point is smaller than the
distance to the light then the point is in shadow

5
Today
• Shadow Maps
– Shadow/View Duality
– Texture Mapping
• Shadow Volumes
• Deep Shadow Maps
• Alias-free Shadow Maps

6
Shadow Maps Are Important
• Both in high-end production software...
– Pixar’s RenderMan
• ... and in real-time rendering (e.g. games)

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7
Shadow/View Duality
• A point is lit if it
is visible from the
light source

• Shadow
computation
similar to view
computation

8
Shadow Mapping
• Texture mapping with
depth information
• 2 passes
– Compute shadow
map == depth from
light source
• You can think of
it as a z-buffer as
seen from the light
– Render final image,
check shadow map
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in shadow Foley et al. “Computer Graphics Principles and

Practice”
9
Shadow Map Look Up
• We have a 3D point (x,y,z)WS
• How do we look up
the depth from the
shadow map?
(x',y',z')LS (x,y,z)WS

• Use the 4x4

perspective projection
matrix from the light
source to get (x',y',z')LS
• ShadowMap(x',y') < z'?
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Foley et al. “Computer Graphics Principles and

Practice” 10
Shadow Map Look Up Questions?
• We have a 3D point (x,y,z)WS
• How do we look up
the depth from the
shadow map?
(x',y',z')LS (x,y,z)WS

• Use the 4x4

perspective projection
matrix from the light
source to get (x',y',z')LS
• ShadowMap(x',y') < z'?
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Foley et al. “Computer Graphics Principles and

Practice” 11
Limitations of Shadow Maps
1. Field of View
2. Bias (Epsilon)
3. Aliasing

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12
1. Field of View Problem
• What if point to
shadow is outside
field of view of
shadow map?
– Use 6 shadow maps
on the faces of a cube
– ... or use only
spot lights

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13
2. The Bias (Epsilon) Nightmare
• For a point visible
from the light source
ShadowMap(x’,y’)  z’
– But due to rounding
errors the depths
never agree exactly
• How can we
avoid erroneous
self-shadowing?
– Add bias (epsilon)
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14
2. Bias (Epsilon) for Shadow Maps
ShadowMap(x’,y’) + bias < z’
Choosing a good bias value can be very tricky

Correct image Not enough bias Way too much bias

(“surface acne”)

15
3. Shadow Map Aliasing
• Under-sampling of the shadow map
– Jagged shadow edges

16
3. Shadow Map Filtering
• Should we filter the depth?
(weighted average of neighboring depth values)
• No... filtering depth is not meaningful
Surface at z = 49.8

50.2 50.0 50.0

<49.8?
X
50.1 1.2 1.1
Filter 22.9 Compare 1

1.3 1.4 1.2

Ordinary texture map filtering. Does not work for depth maps.
Image by MIT OpenCourseWare.

17
3. Percentage Closer Filtering
• Instead we need to filter the result of the shadow test
(weighted average of comparison results)
Surface at z = 49.8

50.2 50.0 50.0

0 0 0
<49.8?
X
50.1 1.2 1.1
Compare
0 1 1 Filter 0.55

1 1 1
1.3 1.4 1.2

Sample transform step

Image by MIT OpenCourseWare.

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3. Percentage Closer Filtering
• 5x5 samples
• Nice antialiased
shadow
• Using a bigger
filter produces
fake soft shadows
• Setting bias
is tricky

19
3. Percentage Closer Filtering
• 5x5 samples
• Nice antialiased
shadow
• Using a bigger
filter produces
fake soft shadows
• Setting bias
is tricky

Questions?
20
Shadows in Production
• Often use
shadow maps
• Ray casting as
fallback in case
of robustness
issues

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21
Hardware Shadow Maps
• Can be done with hardware texture mapping
– Texture coordinates u,v,w generated using 4x4 matrix
– Modern hardware permits tests on texture values

22
Hardware Shadow Maps Questions?
• Can be done with hardware texture mapping
– Texture coordinates u,v,w generated using 4x4 matrix
– Modern hardware permits tests on texture values

23
Today
• Shadow Maps
• Shadow Volumes
– (The Stencil Buffer)
• Deep Shadow Maps
• Alias-free Shadow Maps

24
Shadow Volumes
• Explicitly represent the volume
of space in shadow
• For each polygon
– Pyramid with point
light as apex
– Include polygon to cap

25
Shadow Volumes
• If a point is inside a shadow
volume cast by a particular light,
the point does not receive any
illumination from that light

• Cost of naive
implementation:
#polygons * #lights

26
Shadow Volumes Questions?
• If a point is inside a shadow
volume cast by a particular light,
the point does not receive any
illumination from that light

• Cost of naive
implementation:
#polygons * #lights

27
Better Shadow Volumes
• Shoot a ray from the eye to
the visible point
• Increment/decrement a
counter each time we
intersect a shadow
volume polygon
-1 +1
• If the counter ≠ 0,
the point is +1
in shadow

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Stencil Buffer
• Tag pixels in one rendering pass to
control their update in subsequent frame buffer
rendering passes
– "For all pixels in the frame buffer" →
"For all tagged pixels in the frame buffer"
• Can specify different rendering
operations for each case: depth buffer
– stencil test fails
– stencil test passes & depth test fails
– stencil test passes & depth test passes

stencil buffer
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 Stencil Buffer – Real-time Mirror
• Clear frame, depth & stencil buffers
• Draw all non-mirror geometry to
frame & depth buffers
• Draw mirror to stencil buffer, where
depth buffer passes
• Set depth to infinity, where stencil
buffer passes
• Draw reflected geometry to without reflected
frame & depth buffer, where stencil geometry
buffer:
stencil buffer passes
See NVIDIA's stencil buffer tutorial
http://developer.nvidia.com
also discusses blending, multiple © NVIDIA. All rights reserved. This content is excluded from our Creative Commons
mirrors, objects behind mirror, etc… license. For more information, see http://ocw.mit.edu/help/faq-fair-use/.

30
Shadow Volumes w/ the Stencil Buffer
Initialize stencil buffer to 0
Draw scene with ambient light only
Turn off frame buffer & z-buffer updates
Draw front-facing shadow polygons
If z-pass → increment counter
Draw back-facing shadow polygons +1
If z-pass → decrement counter
Turn on frame buffer updates
Turn on lighting and
0
redraw pixels with +2
counter = 0

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Shadow Volumes w/ the Stencil Buffer
Initialize stencil buffer to 0
Draw scene with ambient light only
Turn off frame buffer & z-buffer updates
Draw front-facing shadow polygons
If z-pass → increment counter
Draw back-facing shadow polygons +1
If z-pass → decrement counter
Turn on frame buffer updates
Turn on lighting and
0
redraw pixels with +2
counter = 0

Questions?
32
If the Eye is in Shadow...
• ... then a counter of 0 does
not necessarily mean lit
• 3 Possible Solutions:
1. Explicitly test eye
point with respect
to all shadow volumes -1
2. Clip the shadow
volumes to the
view frustum
-1
3. "Z-Fail" shadow 0
volumes

33
1. Test Eye with Respect to Volumes
• Adjust initial
counter value

Expensive
0

+1
0
+1

34
2. Clip the Shadow Volumes
• Clip the shadow volumes to the view frustum
and include these new polygons
• Messy CSG

35
3. "Z-Fail" Shadow Volumes
Start at infinity

...

Draw front-facing shadow polygons

If z-fail, decrement counter
0
Draw back-facing shadow polygons
If z-fail, increment counter

... 0
+1

36
3. "Z-Fail" Shadow Volumes

• Introduces problems
with far clipping plane
• Solved by clamping the 0
depth during clipping

0
+1

37
3. "Z-Fail" Shadow Volumes

• Introduces problems
with far clipping plane
• Solved by clamping the 0
depth during clipping

0
+1

Questions?
38
Optimizing Shadow Volumes
• Use silhouette edges only (edge where
a back-facing & front-facing polygon meet)

39
Shadow Volumes Are Sort of Passé
• It is possible to implement shadow volumes rather
efficiently using the stencil buffer
– John Carmack’s Doom 3 engine did this very well
– Shadow volumes had their 15 minutes of popularity around that
time Id Software
– NVIDIA even came up with
hardware acceleration
(“UltraShadow”)
• Further info Screenshot from video game Doom 4 removed due to copyright restrictions.

– Wikipedia
– Aila & Akenine-Möller:
Hierarchical Shadow Volumes,
Proc. Graphics Hardware 2004 40
Shadow Volumes Are Sort of Passé
• The need to extract
silhouette edges and
rasterize the resulting
shadow polygons is just
too much work when
scene complexities and
image resolutions grow
• Still, such use of the
stencil buffer can be
useful for other tricks ???
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41
Shadow Volumes Are Sort of Passé
• The need to extract
silhouette edges and
rasterize the resulting
shadow polygons is just
too much work when
scene complexities and
image resolutions grow
• Shadow maps are bad,
but they’re the best
we’ve got! ???
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42
Further Reading on Shadows
• Some recent techniques allow filtering the shadow
map instead of just the tests (percentage closer)
– Works pretty well in some situations, although not general
– Variance Shadow Maps (Donnelly, Lauritzen I3D 2006)
– Convolution Shadow Maps Annen et al. 2008

• Annen et al., SIGGRAPH 2008

• Annen et al., EGSR 2007
• An interesting hybrid between
shadow maps and ray tracing
– Aila and Laine, Alias-Free
Shadow Maps, EGSR 2004 © ACM. All rights reserved. This content is excluded from
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43
Today
• Shadow Maps
• Shadow Volumes
– (The Stencil Buffer)
• Deep Shadow Maps
• Alias-free Shadow Maps

44
Deep shadow maps
• Lokovic & Veach, Pixar
• Shadows in participating media like smoke, inside
hair, etc.
– They represent not
just depth of the
first occluding
surface, but the
attenuation
along the light rays
• Note: shadowing
only, no scattering
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45
Visibility function along depth
• Fraction of a pixel occluded, as a function of depth
• Due to
– small occluders, semi-transparent objects, smoke &
volumetric effects

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46
Deep shadow maps
• Preprocess:
Compute dense visibility function for each pixel of
shadow map
– send lots of rays or rasterize at a high resolution
– compress visibility function at each pixel
• to reduce memory cost
• At render time, shadow query
– Transform visible point into light coordinates
• just like shadow maps
– Read visibility value from compressed function

47
Compression algorithm
• Approximation:
Piecewise linear
• Set an error bound
• Decide which vertices
to keep
• Greedy from zero do far

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48
Deep shadow map results

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49
Deep shadow map results

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50
Deep shadow map results
• Advantage of deep shadow map over higher-
resolution normal shadow map:
Pre-filtering for shadow antialiasing

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51
Enables motion blur in shadows

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52
Enables motion blur in shadows

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Questions? 53
Today
• Shadow Maps
• Shadow Volumes
– (The Stencil Buffer)
• Deep Shadow Maps
• Alias-free Shadow Maps

54
Alias-free shadow maps
• Aila and Laine,
http://www.tml.tkk.fi/~timo/
• aka Irregular z-buffer by Johnson et al.
http://pl887.pairlitesite.com/papers/tog05-izb/

• Following slides by Aila and Laine

55
Content removed due to copyright restrictions -- please see slide 4,6-14 from Timo Aila and Samuli Laine's talk slides on "Alias-
Free Shadow Maps." available at https://research.nvidia.com/publication/alias-free-shadow-maps for further details.

56
Irregular z buffer results

A video clip demonstrating the irregular z buffer results has been removed due to copyright restrictions.

57
 That’s All For Today!

Image removed due to copyright restrictions -- please see Fig. 4 in S. Laine and T. Aila, ”Hierarchical
Penumbra Casting.” Computer Graphics Forum 24(3) (Eurographics 2005) for further details.

Image: Laineand Aila, EG 2005

58
MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu

6.837 Computer Graphics

Fall 2012

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