Publication Details
Comparison of Modern Omnidirectional Precise Shadowing Techniques Versus Ray Tracing
Milet Tomáš, Ing., Ph.D. (DCGM)
Tóth Michal, Ing.
Herout Adam, prof. Ing., Ph.D. (DCGM)
shadow algorithms rendering ray tracing rendering systems
This paper presents an in depth comparison of state-of-the-art precise shadowing
techniques for an omnidirectional point light. We chose several types of modern
shadowing algorithms, starting from stencil shadow volumes, methods using
traversal of acceleration structures to hardware-accelerated ray-traced shadows.
Some methods were further improved - robustness, increased performance; we also
provide the first multi-platform implementations of some of the tested
algorithms. All the methods are evaluated on several test scenes in different
resolutions and on two hardware platforms - with and without dedicated hardware
units for ray tracing. We conclude our findings based on speed and memory
consumption. Ray-tracing is the fastest and one of the easiest methods to
implement with small memory footprint. The Omnidirectional Frustum-Traced Shadows
method has a predictable memory footprint and is the second fastest algorithm
tested. Our stencil shadow volumes are faster than some newer algorithms.
Per-Triangle Shadow Volumes and Clustered Per-Triangle Shadow Volumes are
difficult to implement and require the most memory; the latter method scales well
with the scene complexity and resolution. Deep Partitioned Shadow Volumes does
not excel in any of the measured parameters and is suitable for smaller scenes.
The source codes of the testing framework have been made publicly available.
@article{BUT182324,
author="Jozef {Kobrtek} and Tomáš {Milet} and Michal {Tóth} and Adam {Herout}",
title="Comparison of Modern Omnidirectional Precise Shadowing Techniques Versus Ray Tracing",
journal="COMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM",
year="2022",
volume="41",
number="1",
pages="106--121",
doi="10.1111/cgf.14425",
issn="0167-7055",
url="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cgf.14425"
}