Original Post
Theres a topic by Yann L in the OpenGL section that is about shadow mapping. In his last post (on page 2) he says (link to topic)
Quote:I understand the idea of sorting lights and caching shadow maps for reusing when geometry doesn't change in the bounding area of the light, or when a light would be marked as static or whatever. But what I fail to understand, is that he talks about partial update of shadow maps. how does one partially update a shadow map? That would only be possible if: - light is not moving - only static geometry is rendered into the _mother_ shadow map - dynamic geometry is rendered to the shadow map with blending is this correct, or am I missing something that makes other situations good for partially updating shadow maps? btw. i know it is an OpenGL topic, but I think it is about a more generic subject. Kind regards
The system also checks, if a shadowmap is already available in the cache, if so at what resolution, and if it needs partial of full updating. It then inserts the lightsource into the cache. The thing is repeated for all visible sources. Note, that at this point, nothing is rendered yet.
