shadow resolution

Unity Engine
1

Hi,

I upgraded to pro just before the 2.1 release, so had very little time to play with shadows before i upgraded… This being said, I am sure when in 2.0 I had jagged shadows, I could edit the resolution of the shadow map from the lights properties (ie: with numeric values)…

now it seems i can only choose from ‘low medium or high’ resolution and ‘high’ does not seem to make any difference to the jaggedness of the shadows? I assume there is something i am missing in my use of real time shadows in 2.1? Is there a way to set what high actually is?

cheers
and thanks for any help

andrew

2

No, that was never possible. You can set shadow distance numerically, which would have an effect on quality. The differences with 2.1 is that video cards with 512MB or more can have higher resolution shadow maps, and that if you’re running out of VRAM, it will reduce shadow map quality automatically. Increasing the number of cascades will also reduce jagginess. What “low”, “medium”, and “high” mean exactly depends on what kind of light you’re using.

–Eric

3

i am wondering then if i am doing something else wrong… is this what a hard shadow cast by a point light ‘should’ look like? When I change to a directional light and make a soft shadow it looks similar, just the jagged edges are blurrier? (i have tested on a 512mb video card, and the scene is very simple with only one other texture so the VRAM can’t be full??

87140--3383--$shadow_jaggies_439.jpg

4

The shadow resolution of point lights is less than directional lights, since the shadow with a point light has to be a cubemap. The docs have a good description of what the various parameters for shadows do and what the results are when tweaking them.

–Eric

5

As was touched upon briefly above, it will be more intensive but you can set the shadow type to soft, then make sure under your project settings that for the quality types you want (and the editor default) that hard and soft shadows are enabled and then change the number of cascades. I think 4 is the best for cascades and produces the cleanest shadows. That being said, they are still not without issue and when standing perfectly still they always look blockier, but aren’t as noticeable when moving.