Does anyone know how this was accomplished? I was under the impression that shadows could only be cast by spot lights.
If I’m not mistaken that’s a fairly old demo, and my guess is that feature was too incomplete to end up in the final build or some such. Note the strange artifacts when the light is directly over a row of benches…
I beleive that the reason only spotlight shadows are supported is because this would be the quick and easy way of doing things, with it all emanating at an angle from a single point. In modern game engines outdoor scenes are lit with a directional light. A directional light is a light that originates from an unknown position but always cast shadows/shades things from that angle. Kinda like a sun. (In theory a sun is like a point light, but is so far away, it just wastes resources to continuallyt recalculate the angle, when it makes no visual difference). I have been wondering as well how hard it would be to add point/directional light support.
I think the reason we only have spotlights is because we use buffer shadows, instead of setncil shadows; the shadows are stored in an image, and the image is just projected from the spotlight. They;re softer than stencil shadows, but if you zoom in you can see the pixels. Stencil shadows are entirely mathematical, so you can project them from an infinite plane or a single point in all directions, but you get sharp edges and probably more system drain.
Well, you could use radiosity (too high poly in my opinion) or you could paint the shadow on to the texture.
He has two spotlamps parented to the regular lamp, one facing up, and one facing down. He then hides them by selecting the spotlamps and pressing the H-key.