Shadowmap moving with camera

Question

I am trying to shadowmap a large terrain, I position my light that it is always at the position of the player and looking at the player, the problem is that the shadows now move with the player, I tried to set the position to 0 1000 500 and look at the player always and its a good improvement however the player moves out of the light there are now no shadows :(

How am I supposed to make the light so it covers the entire terrain and everything has shadows all the time without the shadow moving effect?

I am really stuck right now, do I need to somehow calculate scene bounds? would that help at all?

Answer 1

It'd be helpful if we knew what API or engine you're using.

If your shadows are from the Sun, you should be using a directional light, not a point or spot light. This means using an orthographic projection matrix when rendering to your shadowmap, as explained here: http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/intermediate-tutorials/tutorial-16-shadow-mapping/

If your terrain is very large, you may want to confine your shadowmap to a small region centered on the player. This is done through via the view and projection matrices used to render to the shadowmap. If you take this approach, you will encounter a "swimming" artifact discussed here: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/462238-swimming-shadow-edges-can-they-be-eliminated/