Does shadowmask mode actually work?

It’s supposed to bake the shadows for static objects but it doesn’t. I can see in shadow mask mode that the static object’s color is changing to red to indicate that the baked shadowmask was generated for it, but when i move the mixed light, it recalculates the shadow on the static object which implies that the shadow isn’t actually baked.

Docs

do you by any chance use “distance shadowmask” mode? Because in that case, shadows on near objects are being calculated in realtime, if light is set to mixed.

The light was set to distance shadow mask… Re-baking now and we will see if things change.

Distance Shadowmask is a project setting. If you enable it (it’s on by default), you’ll only see baked shadows for objects that are far away from the camera. If you want to always use the baked shadows, you can switch from “Distance Shadowmask” to “Shadowmask” in project settings.