Introducing better shadows with Exponential Shadow Maps

[GameMonetize]

Hello team!

as part of 3.0 version, I'm proud to announce the availability of ESM shadows (Exponential Shadow Maps).

I updated the great doc done by @Wingnut to take this in account: http://doc.babylonjs.com/tutorials/shadows

VSM (variance shadow maps) were removed (to keep backward compatibility the properties are still here but they will trigger a warning in the console).

ESM are great because they can be blurred. Here is an example of all kind of shadows we have now: http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#20FROK#2

ESM are great because they allow you to deal with selfshadowing: http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1CXNXC#3

 

Hope you like it!

[inteja]

Love it! 

[Wingnut]

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1CMD3G#30

SO bumpy-edged (acne? heh - a term borrowed from some shadow tutorial contributor), even with a big 4096 shadowGen.  hmm. 

*shrug*  Lines 22-33 is experiment zone.

I'm probably making mistakes, though.  I don't work-with shadows too often.

Also, light.shadowMinZ and .shadowMaxZ (for lights used in shadowGenerators) are not included in PG intellisense (as far as I can tell)... but perhaps too new, yet.  Just thought I'd mention it.

Congrats on the feature-add, DK and crew!   I think the shadows tutorial is yours, @Deltakosh.  If it were mine, it would contain 20%+ incorrect statements. 

[GameMonetize]

Better? http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1CMD3G#33

[Wingnut]

Yeah, that works, but, no.  You re-aimed the light.  Is the light angle related-to the jaggies?  Seems so.  Causes diagonal edges, I suppose.

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1CMD3G#34

[Wingnut]

But, hmm..  http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1CMD3G#35

Orbiting the light around mesh, constantly doing light.setDirectionToTarget...  looks good again, even with angled shadow.  Ok, I think I'm starting to understand this.  Or not.    I'm out-of-category a bit.  I should start Q/A thread.

[GameMonetize]

You've got my point:) The position is important for shadows as it give the position to use to cast the shadows

[Wingnut]

Yeah, I understand. 

And... it seems... the directionalLight beams should be the exact same direction... as the angle between light and target POSITIONS (for least jaggies).  ie. Set light and target positions first, then light.setDirectionToTarget(target.position) to "get your beams aligned".    (it's a log cabin-builder's thing) 

[meteoritool]

I feel we're getting closer to cascaded shadow maps ;-)

It's getting better everyday !

you rock !

[iiceman]

Awesome! Thats really huge! (as DK likes to say) Especially the self-shadowing, that has been bugging me for a while! I have to try that out as soon as possible!  (*feeling*excited*)