Do anybody know what's the best way to calculate the shadow volume of a mesh, generated by a directional light?
I looked to the DX7SDK ShadowVol2 sample but it seemed too complicated to me.
Is out there an easier way of doing this?

I think the easiest way to do this is to first calculate the silouhette (or how do you write this) / contours of the object.
This can be done by calculating the edges which form the contours.
If you know the contour edges you can create a plane for each edge.
All these edges will setup the volume.
Everything inside this volume is inside the shadow casted by this object.
Ofcourse you can also use projection for this, by calculating the shadow texture of this object and then project it on the geometry which is visible seen from the light.

Anyway, I hope this helps you a bit in the right direction

- John vd Burg
Programmer of Oxygen3D
john@mysticgd.com http://www.mysticg.dcom