Approximate Soft Shadows with an Image-Space Flood-Fill Algorithm

Most former soft shadow algorithms have either suffered from restricted self-shadowing capabilities, been too slow for interactive applications, or could only be used with a limited types of geometry. In this paper, we propose an efficient image-based approach for computing soft shadows. Our method is based on shadow mapping and provides the associated benefits. We use pixel-based visibility computations for rendering penumbra regions directly into the screen-space. This is accomplished by using a modified flood-fill algorithm which enables us to implement the algorithm using programmable graphics hardware. Even though the resulting images are most often high quality, we do not claim that the proposed method is physically correct. The computation time and memory requirements for soft shadows depend on image resolution and the number of lights, not geometric scene complexity.