Eh? No itâs notâŚyou get a free engine, with no strings attached at all. Itâs completely, totally free, without royalties or anything. I hope you realize that if they gave away the whole engine, theyâd go out of business pretty quickly. (Epic doesnât really make money off UDK, they make money off of licensing Unreal Engine, which isnât the same as UDK.) Anyway, aside from realtime shadows (which can be implemented without Pro, see here), the free license does have âfull lightingâ. What it is you think youâre missing, exactly?
âEric
If you want to make the graphically intense, professional, commercial 3D titles⌠then the pro version is a no brainier.
However not every game fits within those parameters and as such the free version is adequate for many.
Unity is NOT a free game engine. Unity Free is a free game engine - small but important distinction.
Oh, and seriously work on your writing - that brain dump could be 10% of the current length, allowing us to best address your concerns.
Wrong!
Unity PRO is NOT a free game engine. Unity is a free game engine - small but important distinction. 
(aka, there is no Unity version called free)
Oh, you knew what he meant. Many people call it Unity Free, even if itâs not officially called that.
I attempted to remove this thread as it was clear from the first 2 posts that the replies might be frosty to say the least. I could find no obvious way to delete it so I took out the substance of the post. or should I call it the mind dump as it was kindly referred to 
Any admins reading please feel free to remove it.
Mean time, I apologise for having made a mistake in assuming that the free version of the Engine was complete in the sense that is had all the basic features of the Pro Version. I realise that of course the Pro version must contain many elements that a free version could not. I was simply lamenting the fact that real time shadows and near light maps happen to be part of those missing elements.
As long as the distinction is made, Iâm happy. The one thing unity isnât great on is distinct naming [unity vs unity3d, javascript vs unityscript, unity free vs unity indie vs unity].
You didnât have to remove it, but having what would be in my guess 5-6 paragraphs without spacing, all saying the same is hard to read. You are a welcome member of the community⌠welcome!
Now that youâve given us your concerns in a shorter form, Iâll address them
The Unity free version does have all the basic features of the pro version, but does lack some advanced features as youâve noted. One of the things the free version lacks is the âsuper awesomeâ graphical goodies, which appears to be impacting you quite badly. This doesnât mean you donât have graphical control - you can still write shaders, have lights and shadows* etc. Itâs just the extra bit thatâs been disables.
Youâll note, that the lacking features, while nice to have, have little to no use in actually creating most small indy game. One could almost consider it a distraction. So itâs still a viable game engine - better than many on the market.
So anywho⌠what can you do? Well⌠it depends on what you are doing.
You claimed to require super awesome lighting or something to show off your art⌠and that U3D pro is too expensive. I find that odd given the cost of traditional 3D tools. So I would like to know what are you trying to do - because the answer is different if youâre:
- A student.
- A pro artist looking to show off a cool idea.
- A starving artist looking to freelance.
- Looking for a job.
- A mediocre artist with big dreams.
- etc.
- IIRC objects can have âselfâ [?] shadows [but wonât cast them on other objects]. There is also a third party plugin for shadows IIRC.
Thanks for the detailed reply.
But really I was just expressing a bit of saddness at finding those missing.
As you say they are options that are the cream on the cake and not always good for you.
I am definitly not a student, starving or otherwise, when I was at art collage there were no computers, well maybe one or two in goverment facilities.
From your list I would say I am the etc
You can still do shadows in unity without pro, if you search for that thread.
Yes in the editor you can get gi real time lighting and occlusion, but if you try to make a build with Free Unity those two features will not happen.
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Unity 5 brought full engine feature parity between every tier. Only way you wouldnât see the functionality in a build is if you had it set up wrong or were using a release older than 5.
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5 year old thread. No difference in feature set anymore. As pointed out, if itâs not working, itâs PEBKAC.
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