ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the basic concepts of shadows, including an introduction of the perceptual impact of hard, soft, and colored shadows (Section 1.2). It then classifies the algorithms into major categories (planar receivers of shadows, shadow depth map, shadow volume, ray tracing, etc.), and discusses the high-level algorithm as well as advantages and disadvantages of the categorized approaches (Section 1.3). Because this bookmainly dealswith shadowing based on occlusion of other objects onto the shadowed object, self-shadowing also needs to be considered (Section 1.4). This chapter concludes with the many considerations for choosing the appropriate shadow-determination algorithm, which are usually dependent on non-shadow factors (Section 1.5).
