High Quality Shadows for Real-Time Crowds

Abstract

Real-time shadowed crowds, especially under locally lit environments, pose several distinct challenges. Current solutions for crowds are either very simplistic for multiple lights or only handle a single directional light with shadows. This work focuses on bringing hundreds of local lights with high fidelity shadows for crowds into the real-time domain. Each light is given the ability to cast shadows for all objects (dynamic and static) within the scene, and all the levels of detail used for representing the crowds correctly interact with the lighting conditions. In this paper we introduce depth augmented billboards for crowds, to allow for improved quality under local lights, including self-shadowing. Through use of the GPU fragment programs; this extension is entirely implemented on the graphics card for minimal performance impact.