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Casting shadows with approximated object space accuracy by means of a modified Z-buffer

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Abstract

Shadows are important in enhancing both the realism and the intelligibility of synthetic 2D images of 3D scenes. In order to determine which part of a scene is in shadow, numerous algorithms have been developed. The Z-buffer shadow algorithm and its descendants have proved to be both efficient and easy to implement. However, in casting shadows, the aliasing introduced by the Z-buffer point sampling is notorious. Therefore a new method that is based on a modification of the Z-buffer has been developed. This method deals with the aliasing problem but preserves the strengths of the Z-buffer algorithm. Moreover, as a side effect, the information stored in the modified Z-buffer allows accurate antialiasing of the resulting image.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, NL-5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    J. van Ee & C. W. A. M. van Overveld

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  1. J. van Ee
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  2. C. W. A. M. van Overveld
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Correspondence to C. W. A. M. van Overveld.

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van Ee, J., van Overveld, C.W.A.M. Casting shadows with approximated object space accuracy by means of a modified Z-buffer. The Visual Computer 10, 243–254 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01901581

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01901581

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