Shadow Maps

Shadow Maps are useful in scenes that contain many lights that cast shadows.

Each Light generates one or more Shadow Maps.

There are two parameter types:

• Light properties: Names begin with light.shadow\paramName.

• Global parameters: Names begin with shadowMaps\paramName (specified by the FGI panel, for example).

  

Activating Shadow Maps

Shadow Maps are activated when:

• The global parameter shadowMaps\enable is On.

• At least one Light has the light.shadow\castShadows flag On.

• There are shadow casting Lights inside the current Camera view range.

Generating Shadow Maps

Shadow Maps are generated by rendering the meshes using the light as the rendering viewpoint.

• Meshes must be inside the Light's frustum to be rendered.

• After all the Shadow Maps are generated, another rendering pass applies shadows to the Scene pixels.

• The rendering pipeline determines how the Shadow Maps are applied.

Refresh and Expiration

• See Refresh and Expiration for Shadow Maps.

Omni Lights

Omni Lights cannot have a real frustum, so they are approximated by rendering six Shadow Maps.

Note: that one Omni Light that casts shadows can be almost as heavy as six standard lights.