Project Proposal

Introduction

Reflective shadow maps extend the regular function of shadow maps by simulating light bounces. This requires rendering the scene from the light's point of view. With regular shadow maps all that is needed is the depth buffer for a visibility test. For reflective shadow maps, the normals and colors of points must also be recorded:

Goals

The main goal of this project is to serve as a showcase and example implementation of RSM's. Some features of this project will be:

• ability to load arbitrary models via the OBJ file format
• free movement of camera and spotlight within scene
• dynamically generated shadows from the shadow map
• realtime light bounces from the reflective shadow map

For the camera controls, I was planning to use the mouse to rotate and WASD to move. I was thinking of having the light move along a set path. The scene will be a two-story room with a balcony and an arbitrary OBJ model in the middle. I will need to figure out how to use 128-bit unclamped float textures (for position and normal).

Schedule

References

• Hardware Shadow Mapping.
  Cass Everrit, Ashu Rege, Cem Cebenoyan.
  http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~ravir/6160-fall04/papers/shadow_mapping.pdf.


• Reflective Shadow Maps.
  Carsten Dachsbacher, Marc Stamminger.
  http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=1053460&type=pdf&CFID=215971283&CFTOKEN=83309503.