Variance Shadow Mapping

Okay I decided to upload the current version as meantioned in the thread in Showcase 1.
If you have any questions please ask, but I can´t promise, that I can help you.

Read the ReadMe.txt and have a look on how I integrated the shadows. I would love to see someone going on with them and using them in a project. Why not post some screenshots here on how they are looking in your level

You can download the files here:
http://files.filefront.com/VSMSun+Project+V1/;9447947;/fileinfo.html

Have fun!
Nils Daumann


Edit: I forgot to mention that you need at least A7.07 Comm to use them.

Well done! It's really cool to see more and more advanced effects being realized in 3dgs. Great job, and thanks for sharing.

Wow, thanks for contribution it. It is very good and looks professional.

wow, i was watching your project for a while, and i like it, it's a shame i have a6

Is A7.07 already downloadable?
I can't find it..

EDIT: Found the beta ^^

thank you very much for your efforts and for sharing!

nice work! however i still have problems like artefacts on both the models and the terrain. there is almost no viewing angle where it looks okay at some angles it looks very bad.

have a look at the screenshots, maybe they help to eliminate the problem. gfx card is a geforce 7600 GS.

http://www.ackbytes.com/upload/shot_0.jpg
http://www.ackbytes.com/upload/shot_2.jpg

ulf's screenshots show quite exactly what I've got.

It is a pity, considering your effort!
A pioneer's work can't always be a success!

Thanks for your comments.
You are free to improve the shadows use a bias for the depthcomparison and choose a higher depthmap depth (instead of 16bit floatingpoint per channel 32 bit fp per channel, 12222 -> 14444) It looks much better than but needs a strong hardware... (the higher shadowmap resolution and pixeldepth caused the first demos to have such really hard displayingproblems on "older" hardware)

what exactly is the rendering process, and would it be possible to port to A6

There are three views at the suns position facing the camera with different arc values. Each of them renders a depthmap.
There is an other view placed at the same position as camera having always the same parameters. The objects in this view are rendered with a shader which compares their "real" distance to the light for each pixel using always the depthmap with the highest resolution possible for it. If the "real" depth is bigger than the one safed in the depthmap, it is a shadow and is rendered in a dark grey otherwise it is rendered white. This is then combined per postprocessing with the image rendered by the camera and then displayed.
This is basicly how it works. I also blur the shadowmap which has the smallest arc to get softer shadows near to the camera. This is all combined with keeping the square of the depth in the depthmaps which is used for the variance part...

That is basicly how it works.
It could also be done with A6 comm and render to texture.

Thanks for putting this in the UC Nils, I'll see what happens if I cut done the conditionals thus I need to think of a way to handle the different depth maps off course

Cheers

Frazzle

now you say its possible with a6 comm and r2t dll? if so how?

Quote:

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now you say its possible with a6 comm and r2t dll? if so how?

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It is, but it is quite a bit of work for which I don´t have the time at the moment. I´ve got some plans for further shadowdevelopement, but at the moment I have to gain some more math skills and a better knowledge of directx.
I am working on it, but it will take quite a bit of time. But then I hope that it´ll work for A6 as well. And also that it will run on more systems, without problems.
At the moment I am trying to get this working...: http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/~scherzer/lssm/index.html

I don´t know how the whole thing will turn out, if it ever will


But if you want to convert the code to c-script, you will have to replace the stages feature and the viewmaterials, through materialevents and a viewaligned quad...