Efficient real-time shadow rendering

An apparatus for real-time shadow rendering using cached shadow maps and deferred shading, the apparatus comprising at least one processor coupled to a memory, the memory holding program instructions that when executed by the at least one processor cause the apparatus to perform for at least each key frame of video output:

• determining a viewpoint for a current key frame based on user input;
• filtering texels of a frame-specific shadow map based on a dynamic mask wherein the texels are filtered, for a shadowed light, from a static shadow map and a dynamic shadow map or from the static shadow map only, based on the dynamic mask value for the texels;
• and
• rendering the current key frame based on the frame-specific shadow map and a deferred-shadow rendering algorithm.

A computer-implemented method for generating a tiled compute shader thread group for real-time shadow rendering using cached shadow maps and deferred shading, the method comprising:

• allocating, by one or more processors, discrete shadow maps at different resolutions for modeled lights of a three-dimensional (3D) model;
• compressing, by the one or more processors, the discrete shadow maps by quantizing texels thereof;
• and
• arranging, by the one or more processors, the discrete shadow maps in a data structure for use in runtime rendering.