Shadow techniques.

Hi!
I’m trying to learn how to create shadows in an opengl scene.
I’ve heard about a lot of ways (stencil shadows, volume shadows, ambient occlusion etc.) and I’m a bit lost in all of this.
Can anybody tell me what techniques are worth learning, and proper for a modern engine (using OGL 2.1/3.0+).
If anybody could point me also to some resources on these techniques I’d be grateful.

thanks :slight_smile:

You can start with simple ‘Shadow Maps’, then advance to ‘Cascaded Shadow Maps’, ‘Exponential Shadow Maps’ or change direction to ‘Shadow Volumes’.

I’ve never implemented the latter but pretty happy with ‘Shadow Maps’ derived techniques. They don’t give you good quality immediately, but are pretty easy for the start.

‘Ambient Occlusion’ techniques belong to ‘Global Illumination’ category rather then to shadows.

P.S. all these terms are subjects to search for you

Thanks a lot :slight_smile:
I already started reading.