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Question by ullala · Oct 20, 2010 at 03:11 PM · shadows

shadows are ugly

Hi, I am just starting with Unity and wondering about the ugly shadows that I see, even if I set the Quality Settings to "Fantastic". Here are a screenshot from a simple scene, shadow of default cylinder on default box with default directional light, and hard shadows:

http://www.ullala.at/stuff/unity/shadow/shadow_quality_good.jpg
"Good quality"

http://www.ullala.at/stuff/unity/shadow/shadow_quality_fantastic.jpg
"Fantastic quality"

Changing to soft shadows just kind of blurs the shadow that I see, but its still ugly: www.ullala.at/stuff/unity/shadow/softShadow_quality_good.jpg
"Soft shadows good quality" www.ullala.at/stuff/unity/shadow/softShadow_quality_fantastic.jpg
"Soft shadows fantastic quality"

Is this the normal result?

I am on Mac 10.5.8 2.8 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, ATI Radeon HD 2600, but I see the same on PC.

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Answer by Eric5h5 · Oct 20, 2010 at 04:38 PM

Use as short a shadow distance as you can get away with, and use high resolution for the shadows, with cascades (keeping in mind the VRAM cost). The quality settings are arbitrary and only mean what you've defined them to mean.

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avatar image ullala · Oct 21, 2010 at 07:54 AM 0
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ok thx for your help :-)

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Answer by sanketblackworld · Dec 23, 2016 at 04:32 PM

Hello, This following options help me to resolve this issue.. Go to Edit > Project Settings > Quality (I'm using Hard Shadows, High Resolution, Close Fit, No Cascades, Shadow Distance = you can adjust as per your scene scale)

Thanks

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Answer by YoYoNeL · Feb 27, 2013 at 01:39 PM

Hello, Old post but

it's look like the shadow rendering in your platform (Mac + Unity) don't use hardware features like P.C.F (Percentage Close Filtering) present on NVidia cards.

So, this result look like a shadow map rendering with nearest close filtering (just 1 depth test and binary result: lit or in the shadow).

With PCF, you can have linear filtering (linear combinaison results of neighbors (grid of 2x2 texels or lexels)) for 'free' (like bilinear texture sampling interpolation).

After the 'Quality' setting (in Unity) affect the number of samples/tests/depth comparaison/PCF results using for each pixel. In other word, you can see this like sampling the light source, as a 'micro'-sphere (changing position, orientation and bias of the camera (light view) attached to the light).

YoYoNeL

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Answer by Waz · Feb 06, 2011 at 02:09 AM

Camera far clip distance also affects shadow resolution.

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Answer by 3dDude · Oct 20, 2010 at 03:23 PM

under the light settings change from hard shadows to soft shadows and then if that does not work select the use quality settings and change it to best quality

hope this helps!

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avatar image ullala · Oct 20, 2010 at 04:27 PM 0
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Changing to soft shadows just kind of blurs the shadow that I see, but its still ugly: www.ullala.at/stuff/unity/shadow/softShadow_quality_good.jpg www.ullala.at/stuff/unity/shadow/softShadow_quality_fantastic.jpg

Do you mean with "best quality" the "fantastic quality" settings?

In my $$anonymous$$d these results are not beautiful, and I would like to know if this is normal, or if there is something wrong or if I miss something. Is it really necessary to improve "fantastic" values to reach a result that should be fine for default ("good") computers?

thx for you help

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