Planar shadows

Technical Overview Planar Shadows is a shadowing technique ideal for flat terrains. It achieves shadow-like visual effects by redrawing the mesh projection on the XZ plane. Compared to the widely-used ShadowMap technology, Planar Shadows excels in performance, requiring no RenderTexture resources and only an additional mesh render with simple shading.

Advantages & Features

• High Performance: Eliminates the need for RenderTexture resources, significantly boosting rendering speed.
• Easy Implementation: Achieve realistic shadow effects with an extra mesh render and basic shading.
• Easy Integration: Simply replace your current shader with the provided planar shadow shader, adjust a few parameters, and achieve outstanding shadow effects as demonstrated in our scene.

Included Content

• Four high-efficiency shaders:
• Pure Planar Shadow Shader
• Planar Shadow versions of Lit, SampleLit, and Unlit shaders
• Fully authored using ASE Shader Editor, allowing for custom modifications
• Supports Built-in Render Pipeline and multiple URP versions: URP 10+, URP 12+, URP 14+, URP 16+，URP 17+(Unity 6 LTS)

Important Notes

• Designed for Flat Terrains: Due to its principles, planar shadows are only suitable for flat surfaces.
• Object Layout Suggestion: To maintain optimal shadow effects, shadow-casting objects should have minimal overlap with each other.

Performance Enhancement When using a large number of planar shadow shaders, and if you are utilizing the URP render pipeline, you can further enhance performance with RenderFeature. The included manual explains everything!

Technical Support If your version is unsupported or not functioning correctly, feel free to send an email or join our Discord for support. HDRP support is not planned at this time, as HDRP targets high-end PCs and consoles aiming for high-quality graphics, which might not be suitable for planar shadows. However, if you do need to use planar shadows in HDRP, please contact me directly, and I will provide updates with HDRP support.

Example scenario:

The sample scene is made in 2021.3, that is, URP12, and its default shader is also the version of URP12, if you are opening the sample scene in another version, please import the corresponding shader package, if you have any questions, please contact me!

License Information

"Deer Sculpture" (https://skfb.ly/owNtY) by Miaolailai is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Please note that modifications were made to the original model's color to better fit the design of this product.

Support:

Whether it is a question, feature request, or suggestion, please contact the email:[email protected] or Discord 。

It's recommended that you use Discord to get faster feedback！

Platform Support:

PC

Android

WebGL

iOS

The rest of the platforms have not been tested