Unity 5 Directional Light Shadow Flicker

Question

Hello, after I updated my project to Unity 5 all of the shadows starting to flicker. In Unity 4.6 was no flicker with the setup.

Maybe is this a known bug?

Answer 1

Answer by karpae2k · Nov 30, 2015 at 06:16 PM

I had this problem after adding a huge plane in the scene (water). So turn receive and cast shadows off on the plane or huge object. Worked for me

Add comment · Show 2 · Share

northernthumb · Oct 12, 2016 at 09:05 PM 1

Share

I had a weird gradient appearing in the shadows and turned out to be a massive floor bouncing light all over the place. Removed shadow from floor and added fake small floor to pick up the shadow and now works fine so HUGE thanks to @karpae2k for suggesting this

Rapisto · Mar 26, 2020 at 09:51 AM 0

Share

Yeeees! It fixed me problem!

Answer 2

Answer by kideternal · Oct 18, 2015 at 09:13 AM

The fix for me was setting the rotation on my directional light to have integral values for each axis.

Add comment · Show 3 · Share

Beloudest · Oct 18, 2015 at 09:40 AM 0

Share

This sounds interesting, integral values, first time I have heard of them in maths or just forgotten. What was your reasoning behind this and how do you implement that? Cheers.

Mutrumbo · Oct 18, 2015 at 04:02 PM 0

Share

I suspect kideternal meant "integer" or whole, positive number (e.g., 100 vs. 99.9).

kideternal Mutrumbo · Oct 18, 2015 at 06:00 PM 0

Share

Yes, integer. Turns out I'm mistaken about this. All it did was revert to regular realtime lighting, which is nearly indistinguishable from baked in my complex scene until you compare framerate. (I'd have noticed sooner, but my bakes keep locking-up Unity at the end.) $$anonymous$$y apologies. :(

Answer 3

Answer by Beloudest · Sep 28, 2015 at 06:30 AM

I too suffered with this issue. For me the solution was the shadow Bias on my main directional light. I had a very low value of 0.05 or something silly. When I cranked it up to 1 my shadows were perfect with no flicker. Lower the value the more flicker.

Add comment · Share

Answer 4

Answer by Beloudest · Sep 26, 2015 at 05:43 PM

The low near field clipping value fix also fixed a alignment issue with my global fog. Very strange but it seems low values do have strange effects on the deferred pipeline.

Add comment · Share

Answer 5

Answer by bellatesla · Sep 20, 2015 at 08:29 PM

[Fixed] I came across this issue as well today I am posting because I actually found the answer to shadows flickering and what not with out the help of the forums.

After trying every setting I narrowed it down to the cascade distances of the shadows. After adjusting the "cascade splits" and "total cascades" I was able to remove this flicker effect completely. They are set to a default setting and depending on the camera ditance to your world you will want to adjust these to fit your needs. I hope this helps someone.

Add comment · Show 3 · Share

bartm4n · Sep 26, 2015 at 04:20 AM 2

Share

Thanks @bellatesla, I was able to find a workaround for this bizzare issue in forward rendering mode. The issue goes away in deferred, but some of my assets aren't compatible yet so this was helpful.

bartm4n bartm4n · Sep 26, 2015 at 06:54 PM 1

Share

Hm. It turns out that this actually only helped mask the issue. The flickering was present in deferred as well, just not as visibly. It turns out that one of my assets automatically added a special global fog image effect to the main camera which made AA apply ahead of it. I adjusted the order so that AA was last in line and the issue disappeared entirely .

toth-b-benedek-99 bartm4n · Apr 29, 2020 at 11:18 AM 0

Share

Oh, Thank You very much, bro! I've been struggling with this for days... I've tried everything, literally everything. And only your solution worked. Changing $$anonymous$$ain Camera Rendering Path to "Deferred" solved my issue completely. God Bless You! Cheers!

Unity 5 Directional Light Shadow Flicker

24 Replies

Your answer

Welcome to Unity Answers

Follow this Question

Related Questions