Cascaded Shadows Maps (CSM)

Shadow maps are a common technique for adding shadows inside virtual environments.

There are different techniques to handle shadows and mitigate all kinds of issues, but these techniques must be enabled (or maybe disabled) and adapted on a case-by-case basis.

• Setting the Z Range

• Partitioning Scheme for View Frustrum

• Bias

• Filtering

• Sample Distribution

• Fade

Shadows Range

You can remove many artifacts by increasing the resolution of the shadow map so that each shadowed pixel is neither undersampled or oversampled.

• Shadow map resolution cannot be infinite, so you should maximize the use of Shadow map pixels to better use each pixel.

• The less that pixels need shadows, the more space there is for each pixel inside the Shadow map.

• Using a really large shadow map can introduce undersampling of artifacts and some objects. For example, thin objects such as wires may not cast shadows or produce shimmering.