Shadow Casting with Stencil Buffer for Real-Time Rendering

Lee Weng, Daut Daman, and Mohd Rahim              
Faculty of Computer Science and Information System, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia

Abstract: We present a new method for real-time rendering of soft shadows in dynamic scenes. Our approach is based on shadow volume algorithm which provides fast, accurate and high quality shadows. The shadow volume algorithm is used to generate hard shadows before adding fake soft shadows onto it. Although the generated soft shadows are physically inaccurate, this method provides soft shadows that are smooth and perceptually convincing. This proposed hybrid method adds more realism to a dynamic scene which is an important factor in computer graphics. 

Keywords: Shadow volume, silhouette detection, rendering, depth-pass, soft shadow

 Received November 14, 2006; accepted May 31, 2007