Decent shadow system

[eLidzer]

Hello,

I am making a little game engine and I chose to mix Irrlicht (3D display), IrrKlang (audio) and Tokamak (3D physics). I'm struggling to find a decent shadow system to generically adapt to my models, and I tried different technics:
- Shadow volumes (stencil shadows), not so visually appealing, CPU-consuming and irrelevant to closed spaces, floors, or any special case which produces glitches;
- XEffects, quite easy to adapt but which is irrelevant too as it can't manage exteriors or directional lighting (or I missed something);
- Shaders system I could write myself to get texture shadows, but it is an hard task (I cannot implement it as I hardly found any good tutorial);

I do not want to switch to Ogre or any other engine but if I had to do I would switch. What I wish is a decent method to get a decent working shadows system, and I know Ogre and Panda3D can provide it. If Irrlicht is very appealing on many aspects, I must admit shadows system is quite inexistant, which is unprofessionnal despite the many qualities Irrlicht has. So, I ask you : how can I get working shadows?

Thanks!

[Mel]

Go for your own shadowmapping system... Or better yet, try to get those in Ogre or Panda3D working in Irrlicht

[eLidzer]

Go for your own shadowmapping system...

I have a decent level in C++, and I use Irrlicht for a moment, but my skills in maths are somewhat... limited.

Or better yet, try to get those in Ogre or Panda3D working in Irrlicht

Yes, I could try to adapt a full implementation. For the moment I might allow users to switch on or off an option to enable the shadow. But I will take a look.

EDIT : I'm just thinking : I may adapt XEffects to cast shadows from the Irrlicht native lights and try to adjust parameters to make it looking good... anyway, there is some challenge.

[Mel]

At any rate, the only really useful shadow system which trades well distance, quality and simplicity currently is cascaded shadow maps, and i think neither Panda nor Ogre use it natively.

[eLidzer]

Okay, I have taken a deeper look to XEffects, and I have more or less understood how it works:
-Blend with ambient light (ie. black);
-Project, for each "spot" light, to know if a point can be lightened;
-Blur the shadow map to give it a better look;
-Apply the result;

But what I would like to have as a minimum requirement is a projector system similar to Unity (at least I suppose), where you put a spot which draws shadows but does not fill with the ambient color (or black) the parts out of the spot. Don't know if someone has tips, but I hope I will find a solution.