How to get Dynamic Shadows in Unity

I downloaded and installed the free version of Unity yesterday. I wanted to quickly prototype something in a "white room" so I dropped my model files into my Asset folder and created a new game object by dragging the model into the scene hierarchy. I also placed a plane on the ground, added 1 directional light and pointed my camera at the game object that represented my mesh. So pretty much everything is default except I changed the clear color of the camera to white.

I have "cast shadow" and "accept shadow" checked on both the plane and the mesh, yet I don't see a shadow being cast by my model instance when I preview the game.

Shouldn't shadows "just work" or do I have to do something else to get shadows to be rendered? (Like enable shadow casting on the light too?).

I also noticed that I can't change the material for the plane (all options to modify the material are grayed out). I wanted to change the color of the plane, but couldn't. Do I have to instance a new material for the plane and assign it to the plane in order to change it?

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Create new scene
  2. Create plane at origin
  3. Set plane scale to 200,1,200
  4. Add directional light pointing downwards (slightly offset so shadows are cast at an angle).
  5. Add mesh to scene at the origin of the world
  6. Point camera at object
  7. Preview game in game window.
  8. Frown because I don't see shadows.

Realtime shadows are a UnityPro feature only: http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses You could use shadow projectors on the free version of Unity, but not the dynamic shadows you're going for.

See the Unity documentation on Shadows - it also mentions that it's a Pro-only feature. Like Ricardo said, you can use projectors, and the indie version has a blob shadow prefab - that's explained in the Projector documentation.

yes as these guys said dynamic shadows are a unity pro feature but if you are using the unity pro's trial (that is a limited 30 day trial) you can use shadows. lights has a property called shadows. this property is gay and disabled in unity free, but in unity pro you can choose to have shadows. there are hard and soft shadows. you can use projectiles and blob shadow prefab in standard assets in free edition. if you want to make sure that you have shadows or not you can open the island scene and see if it has shadows enabled or not. also your graphic card should support shadows but most of todays cards support them. for more info about them you can see unity's manual.

You can also try to set terrain lighting as pixel ligthing (default is vertex)

Terrain properties-> terrain sttings->lighting.