Shadow volume

Common card · No. 381789

Shadow volume is a technique used in 3D computer graphics to add shadows to a rendered scene. It was first proposed by Frank Crow in 1977 as the geometry describing the 3D shape of the region occluded from a light source. A shadow volume divides the virtual world in two: areas that are in shadow and areas that are not. The stencil buffer implementation of shadow volumes was widely used in real-time rendering, and were notably employed in the video game Doom 3. The particular variation of the technique used in this game has become known as Carmack's Reverse. In modern real-time rendering, Shadow mapping techniques and their variations have become more widely used, due to their performance characteristics and compatibility with contemporary rendering pipelines.

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