Occlusion Textures for Plausible Soft Shadows*

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to compute plausible soft shadows for complex dynamic scenes and rectangular light sources. We estimate the occlusion at each point of the scene using prefiltered occlusion textures, which dynamically approximate the scene geometry. The algorithm is fast and its performance independent of the light s size. Being image-based, it is mostly independent of the scene complexity and type. No a priori information is needed, and there is no caster/receiver separation. This makes the method appealing and easy to use.