Unity 6000.0.37f1 broken shadow casting, but only in the Build version, not inside Editor (URP)

Unity Engine
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1

Hi! I was trying to port an existing project to the latest LTS 6 version and first encountered the shadow issue there, so I opened a completely new minimalist project. As you can see in the video, everything is perfect inside the editor, but as soon as I start the build version, the shadows simply disappear after a certain distance. In the case of Terrain, disabling the Draw Instanced property solves the issue, but of course the FPS is noticeably lower. However, in the case of Cube, disabling GPU Instancing on the Lit shader does not solve anything. It seems this occurs with all Graphics APIs, and all Rendering Path.

Edit: I didn’t see that there was already a question about this from a while ago, so I apologize for opening a new topic.

2

Although checking the Development Build checkbox solves the issue, it is not a real solution because there will be a “Development Build” text in the lower right corner of the screen, and the size of a simple small game has increased from 94MB to 133MB. Hopefully a fixed LTS version will be available soon.

3

Same for me. No shadows when meshes are a little bit far from the camera (about 20m), while using URP.
I found out that increasing camera FOV increases the shadow distance. Very weird issue.
6000.0.38f have been released today. No patch at all. Hope it will come soon.

4

Same here. Shadows build when targeting Mac builds but not on Windows. Absolutely insane bug when I need to get a prototype build to a client ASAP and there’s no shadows in the game.

Unity 6000.0.36f1

Will upgrade to 38f1 and hope for the best.

Do Unity staff read these threads?

5

I don’t know if Staff saw this, but they did see another one that demonstrates the same bug. You can read the responses here:

6

Btw, you can still test your game with your client now, if it’s not a final version yet, you just have to enable the Development Build option before building. True, this will result in an unhideable text in the bottom right corner of the screen, but it’s not too annoying if you’re still in the testing phase. The fix will arrive sooner or later.

7

Yes we monitor the discussions closely and try to help where we can :slight_smile:

As written in the other thread, @Dale_Kim is on it.

8

I landed a fix for this a few hours ago and we’re now waiting for our QA to verify the fix. If everything goes well, the fix will be available in 6000.0.41f1!

9

Great, thanks in advance!

10

In my case, there is no problem with 6000.0.35, but versions released after 6000.0.36 have the same problem. There is no problem in Unity play mode, but when building, it appears strangely like a shadow, like the user in this article. I hope there’s no problem with the 6000.0.41 version.

11

Not to be a total douche, but it is also broken in HDRP, which mean it was broken since 35 up to 40 (best case scenario) which means Unity 6 directional shadows is going to be broken for 6 weeks…

I mean…come on.

Speed the process or make it a priority. This is a not a beta version. we are on the 40th patch of Unity 6…and directional light shadows is broken…

12

I see that it is fixed for URP but HDRP in 6000.0.40, I hope you guys are aware of it.

13

Wait, is the bug in URP really fixed? Just because I checked the release notes, and it still says this under Known Issues: “URP Cascaded Shadows do not have a falloff in Player when the Player is built not in Development Mode”. I’m only asking because I don’t want to update unnecessarily, but if it’s fixed, then HDRP won’t affect me.

14

We haven’t yet released the fix yet. It should be out in 6000.0.41f1.

The bug is not in URP specifically, it actually looks like a compiler optimization bug that I had to work around in the engine.

15

Please consider removing the “development build” text from the development mode, this way can build the game properly.

There is so many issues in release builds that make it crazy to have to see this text when could have a working build.

Or add a checkbox to remove it on demand when building.

16

I can confirm it’s happening in HDRP in 6000.0.40f1 as well.

17

I can confirm that 6000.0.41 has the cascade shadow issue fixed for HDRP - and I assume the same for URP as this is a compiler optimization related. Apologies about the previous post where I said 40f has it fixed - it was in dev mode.

But I do have something to say about this.

Here is your download archive of Unity 6 (Only LTS versions)

Now, this cascade shadow issues started around 32f~34f I am not 100% sure, but remember that we had a memory not releasing on Alt+F4 since 23f to 37f (fixed in 37f)

This means all Unity 6 LTS versions except the 41f (released today) had critical bugs. It either had directional shadows broken or an executable that stayed on memory - this results in Steam saying “The game is still running” after alt+f4 quit, and we had to either write a custom line for exit or force quit in task bar. Which often corrupted the dlls in Library folder if I was running this in Editor. Then I had to remove the bee folder in Library and the usual rinse and repeat.

TLDR,

41f is the first version of Unity 6 that is critical bug free.

First release of Unity6 LTS is October 16, 2024. I don’t know if I should congratulate or be worried.
Now I am going back to work, and pray that there are no further critical bugs.

18

I just tested it and it’s finally fixed! Thank you!

20

created my own topic, its a related issue: HDRP - Shadow popping-in and out in the last cascade

21

weird, it’s not fixed for me in 41 HDRP. Even created a fresh project to verify.