Hi !
I'm working on a plugin, that can easily render "Parallel-Split Shadow Maps" with Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows, Screen Space Ambient Occlusion and have a support for the PhysX-Engine.
If I get a good performance and a good quality, I plan to sell it for about 10-20 Euro. If it doesn't work as I want it, you can get it for free!

Here is a screenshot of the PSSM with PCSS and SSAO (without textures, yeah it's the demo level):


To Do List:

- improve the quality and performance.
- add PhysX

oho! thats cool. does it support alpha maps, such as leaves?

good question ello and yes, I want to integrate that.
Oh and before I forget it, the plugin will only work for models.

Damn, it looking pretty nice.

If you manage to make this thing work i wont think a second to buy it.(for like €15)

i wonder how's gonna that physx thingy look in game. (well, i tried some cloth physics with phyx and i failed. )

Interesting. I wish you good luck. I am still working on PSSM implementation, but it's not that easy. I have a source code, converted from C++ and it seems to work for now, but I have problems combining the scene. I plan to recombine the splitted shadowmaps after having calculated them out of the splitted depth maps, into one mapping. Is this the right method? I don't really know how to combine them in GS, I tried it with rendering one by one into the screen using process_screen... it didn't work correctly. Can you give me a clue here?

the soft shadows look nice! i don't have such nice filtering in my pssm implementation yet. but the screen space ambient occlusion could be left away in my opinion.

redphoenix: you don't have to combine the maps and you don't have to do multipass rendering like in the opengl demo (i don't even know if this would be easily possible with a7). in the shader you can find the correct shadow map for each pixel by simply checking the distance from the camera.

Wow. This looks indeed very nice.
If it provides good shadows "out-of-the-box" at an acceptable framerate I would really consider buying it (even for 20 euros).

Keep it up!

@ventilator: Thanks again! I will try it immediatly!

Looks wonderful.
What about indoor shadowmaps, for spotlights, flashlights and omnidirectional point lights?
Will it be easy to combine with other shaders, like normalmapping, static lightmaps through Vents plugin and postprocessing effects?
Will stencil shadows work additionally?

yes fogman, that is my aim, to combine all these things. It is very important for me, to have indoor and outdoor lights working together in one level, at the same time. After I finished with the physXs, I make a little demo level with indoor/outdoor lighting, normalmapping and postprocessing effects.
I think stencil shadows slow down the engine too much, but there is no reason why it won't work...well let's see what I can do. I hope I get the physX working until monday.
Cu chris