Important elements of games, movies, and other computer-generated content, shadows are crucial for enhancing realism and providing important visual cues. In recent years, there have been notable improvements in visual quality and speed, making high-quality realistic real-time shadows a reachable goal. Real-Time Shadows is a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of real-time shadow techniques. It covers a large variety of different effects, including hard, soft, volumetric, and semi-transparent shadows. The book explains the basics as well as many advanced aspects related to the domain of shadow computation. It presents interactive solutions and practical details on shadow computation. The authors compare various algorithms for creating real-time shadows and illustrate how they are used in different situations. They explore the limitations and failure cases, advantages and disadvantages, and suitability of the algorithms in several applications. Source code, videos, tutorials, and more are available on the book's website www.realtimeshadows.com.

本书详细阐述了与实时阴影技术相关的高效解决方案及相应的数据结构和算法，主要包括基本阴影技法、阴影图的走样、阴影图的采样、硬阴影的滤波、基于图像的软阴影算法、基于几何体的软阴影算法、基于图像的透明、体积阴影、高级阴影技巧等内容。此外，本书还提供了相应的算法、代码以及伪代码，以帮助读者进一步理解相关方案的实现过程。
本书适合作为高等院校计算机及相关专业的教材和教学参考书，也可作为相关开发人员的自学教材和参考手册。