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Abstract

The generation of shadows in large virtual environments for real-time rendering applications like e.g. video games is still a great challenge for computer graphics. In the past few years shadow mapping and its variants have become widely accepted as appropriate methods for shadow creation, which resulted in large number of advanced shadow mapping techniques that have been introduced recently. For this reason, it sometimes can be difficult for developers to choose a suitable method based on the certain given scenarios. This thesis focuses on an analysis of some common fully hardware-accelerated shadow mapping techniques and their capabilities to combine them with each other. We present an interactive framework that allows the user to experiment with the chosen methods and to visualize almost every interesting aspect of the shadow creation process for arbitrary scenes. It offers the opportunity to generate the shadows by using multiple shadow maps, sample redistribution or both and provides most possible flexibility in terms of various adjustable parameters. Furthermore, it includes a feature to analyze the final results from different points of view, which should help developers to find the best suited algorithm for the given scene.

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BibTeX

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@mastersthesis{Stingl_2011_RHS,
  title =      "Robust Hard Shadows",
  author =     "Martin Stingl",
  year =       "2011",
  abstract =   "The generation of shadows in large virtual environments for
               real-time rendering applications like e.g. video games is
               still a great challenge for computer graphics. In the past
               few years shadow mapping and its variants have become widely
               accepted as appropriate methods for shadow creation, which
               resulted in large number of advanced shadow mapping
               techniques that have been introduced recently. For this
               reason, it sometimes can be difficult for developers to
               choose a suitable method based on the certain given
               scenarios. This thesis focuses on an analysis of some common
               fully hardware-accelerated shadow mapping techniques and
               their capabilities to combine them with each other. We
               present an interactive framework that allows the user to
               experiment with the chosen methods and to visualize almost
               every interesting aspect of the shadow creation process for
               arbitrary scenes. It offers the opportunity to generate the
               shadows by using multiple shadow maps, sample redistribution
               or both and provides most possible flexibility in terms of
               various adjustable parameters. Furthermore, it includes a
               feature to analyze the final results from different points
               of view, which should help developers to find the best
               suited algorithm for the given scene.",
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/186, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology",
  month =      sep,
  URL =        "http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2011/Stingl_2011_RHS/",
}