What is pre-computed bump-granularity self-shadowing?

[XxStratoMasterXx]

For Unreal Engine 3, they say for self-shadowing they use "pre-computed bump-granularity self-shadowing using spherical harmonic maps"

Does this mean it's like PRT on characters? What is this?

 

[squarewithin]

What is this?

A string of buzzwords.

Where does it say that is used on characters? My interetation of that is:
We take our meshes, twiddle the normals by a bumpmap, compute the visible hemisphere for each adjusted normal, then project that into a set of SH coefficients.

Probably not dynamic, but since it's only ambient occlusion, it's a relatively smooth function that you might be able to interpolate values between sets of coefficients for different poses.

That's my take.

 

[XxStratoMasterXx]

Well this is for UE3. This is the self-shadowing algorithm apparently for UE3 characters...

 

[squarewithin]

But we know that they use multiple shadowing techniqes. I'm guessing this is local self-shadowing, as in bumps on characters shadow the adjactent areas, but not like a character's arm shadows his torso. That would still probably be stencil or shadow mapped for the time being.