What are hard shadow and soft shadow algorithms being used in Unity?

[lenhoanh]

Hi all,

I am reading about Lightmapping in Unity. As you know, Unity enables us bake lightmaps as well as real-time shadows.
Could you guys answer me the question “what are hard and soft shadow algorithms being used in Unity now?”
Thank you so much,

Anh Le

[hippocoder]

Standard shadow mapping. A depth buffer is rendered from the light’s position, then shadows are composited into the scene, comparing samples from the shadow map.

This itself isn’t that slow but there’s some slow pieces I’ve found poking through the shader sources. You can of course roll stencil shadows or any kind of shadowing technique in unity yourself - there’s no limit. But unity uses shadow maps for both kinds of shadow.

Mostly because shadow maps don’t require special geometry. With stencil shadows you need special geometry.

[lenhoanh]

Thank you so much,

@hippocoder

Standard shadow mapping. A depth buffer is rendered from the light’s position, then shadows are composited into the scene, comparing samples from the shadow map.

This itself isn’t that slow but there’s some slow pieces I’ve found poking through the shader sources. You can of course roll stencil shadows or any kind of shadowing technique in unity yourself - there’s no limit. But unity uses shadow maps for both kinds of shadow.

Mostly because shadow maps don’t require special geometry. With stencil shadows you need special geometry.

[goat1]

I have bought the asset ‘painterly’ which does well not quite watercolors but a very fast like magic marker effect, well sometimes it looks like pastels or chalk a bit. Is there a watercolor shader in the asset store without the fuss and load of a processing heavy script?