Soft shadows in StarWars Republic Commando

In the new XBox game “StarWars Republic Commando” I noticed that some of the screen shots contain soft shadows.

Here are some pics;

http://www.xbox.com/media/games/starwarsrepubliccommando/sim-starwarsrepubliccommando-006.jpg

http://www.xbox.com/media/games/starwarsrepubliccommando/sim-starwarsrepubliccommando-002.jpg

http://www.xbox.com/media/games/starwarsrepubliccommando/sim-starwarsrepubliccommando-009.jpg

Has anyone played this game, and can they tell me if these shadows are self-shadowing?

How did they do this? And get real-time performance?

Open for discussion! :slight_smile:

They used some Industrial Light and Magic :smiley:

LOL! ;D

And for another flavor of Industrial Light and Magic please reffer to frustum.org and take a look at the soft shadows example, there is a source code (c++) over there, i think…

Well, I had to rent it to try it ;D

They are clearly using shadow maps, and the sample bias is giving the effect of soft edges.

When your playing the game you have a squad of troopers, and each trooper casts a shadow.

It appears that part of the level information contains the location of where shadows will come from. For example, one room may come from the corner, while the hall way connecting the room has it from above. This sometimes looks good, while other times it doesn’t match the levels lighting.

For each trooper they render a small shadow map, and only use this map overtop of the background (i.e. the floors and walls).

So if other animated objects (i.e. bad guys) walk between the trooper and the light source. Then the shadows don’t appear on them. The shadows are also not self-shadowing.

They also gave the shadows on the floors a fall off that blends them into the background. This looks really nice, and helps prevent the shadows from contrasting with the levels lighting.

Still, they get very good frame rate performance, and in the context of a video game people don’t notice the small errors.

Except for one part when the shadows appear on the wall, with the feet of the troopers about 2 feet off the ground. OOPS!

:smiley: