Android OpenGL ES 2.0 – Shadow Mapping

NOTE: This tutorial builds up on my previous 2 tutorials: how to setup OpenGL ES 2.0 on Android and how to render to texture.

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I’ll first link to the apk, source code and the repository:
apk here.
Source code here.
Google Code Repository  here. NOTE: Branch is “shadowMapping”
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UPDATE:

Thanks to Henry’s comment below I was able to fix most of the artifacts showing up. Turns out I had dithering enabled, so I had to disable it to remove the dithering effect [ GLES20.glDisable(GLES20.GL_DITHER) ]. Updated images below – it works but has very slight artifacts when it comes to the mesh’s self-shadows.

Introduction:

Shadow Mapping is a popular technique for rendering shadows in games and other real-time applications. Given how GPUs on mobile devices (iPhone/Android/whatever) are getting more and more powerful every day I thought I might try implementing it on my Samsung Captivate (Galaxy S).

While my implementation “works”, it does not good look at all. Shadow-mapping is prone to many artifacts , which I wasn’t able to properly fix (UPDATE: Main artifacts fixed).I am posting this without the fix in the hopes that somebody can help me out too as to what I am doing wrong.

Here are the updated images (I changed the color of the plane to get a better contrast):

Textured Cube (with proper shadows)

Dragon Head

Octahedron

Here are the old images:

Octahedron Mesh (.OFF) with shadows + artifacts

Dragon-head Mesh (.OFF)

Textured Cube (.OBJ)

I would like to credit Fabien Sanglard for his shadow mapping tutorials which I used as a basis for my code. I looked at his DEngine code as an example. In any case let’s begin.

What is Shadow Mapping?

If you are reading this chances are that you already know what shadow mapping is and how it works, but let me give a quick overview of the steps involved:

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