Differentiable Shadow Mapping for Efficient Inverse Graphics
Markus Worchel Marc Alexa
We show how shadows can be efficiently generated in differentiable rendering
of triangle meshes. Our central observation is that pre-filtered shadow
mapping, a technique for approximating shadows based on rendering from the
perspective of a light, can be combined with existing differentiable
rasterizers to yield differentiable visibility information. We demonstrate at
several inverse graphics problems that differentiable shadow maps are orders of
magnitude faster than differentiable light transport simulation with similar
accuracy -- while differentiable rasterization without shadows often fails to
converge.