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Introduction to CSM
Shadow maps are a very popular technique to obtain realistic shadows in game engines.
When trying to use them for large spaces, shadow maps get harder to tune and will be more prone to exhibit surface acne and aliasing. Cascaded Shadow Map (CSM) is a known approach that helps to fix the aliasing problem by providing higher resolution of the depth texture near the viewer and lower resolution far away. This is done by splitting the camera view frustum and creating a separate depth-map for each partition in an attempt to make the screen error constant.
Capturing everything in a single shadow map would require very high and impractical resolution. Thus, several shadow maps are used - a shadow map that covers only nearby objects so that each casts a detailed shadow; another shadow map that captures everything in the distance with coarse resolution and optionally some more shadow maps in between. This partitioning is reasonable because objects that are far away cast shadows that in screen space occupy just a few pixels and close-by objects might cast shadows that occupy a significant part of the screen.
CSM splits the camera view frustum and creates a separate depth-map for each partition
Result of CSM
Vanda Engine 1 uses Parallel split CSM technique and only one "directional" light can cast shadows on skins and instanced geometries.
For more information about the CSM technique, please refer tothisarticle.
