Rendering Antialiased Shadows with Moment Shadow Mapping
Abstract
Shadow map aliasing is a common artifact in games. Moment shadow maps can improve on this situation. Similar to exponential variance shadow maps, they can be filtered and antialiased directly. However, they offer reduced light leaking and greater robustness at comparable cost. Since they scale well to high output resolutions, they are particularly attractive for virtual reality and 4K rendering.
The session will explain when to utilize moment shadow maps, how they work and how to implement them. It will also explain how they can be used to render contact-hardening soft shadows with large penumbrae and convincing crepuscular rays.
This one-hour lecture at the GDC Europe has been recorded and is available in the GDC Vault. If you do not have access, the slides with narrations are available.
Images
![]() |
Bibtex
@MISC{peters-2016-msm-gdce, author = {Peters, Christoph}, title = {Rendering Antialiased Shadows with Moment Shadow Mapping}, year = {2016}, month = aug, howpublished = {Game Developers Conference Europe 2016}, abstract = {Shadow map aliasing is a common artifact in games. Moment shadow maps can improve on this situation. Similar to exponential variance shadow maps, they can be filtered and antialiased directly. However, they offer reduced light leaking and greater robustness at comparable cost. Since they scale well to high output resolutions, they are particularly attractive for virtual reality and 4K rendering. The session will explain when to utilize moment shadow maps, how they work and how to implement them. It will also explain how they can be used to render contact-hardening soft shadows with large penumbrae and convincing crepuscular rays.}, url = {http://schedule.gdceurope.com/session/rendering-antialiased-shadows-with-moment-shadow-mapping} }