Introduction

Umbra Soft Shadows is a professional-grade shadow solution for the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) in Unity. It replaces or enhances Unity's default shadow system with high-quality, customizable soft shadows featuring contact hardening, screen-space contact shadows, and multiple blur modes.

Key Features

• Soft shadow sampling with up to 64 samples and six quality presets (Fast, Hard, Soft, Smooth, Extra Smooth, Blurred)
• Contact hardening (PCSS) — shadows sharpen near occluders and soften with distance
• Screen-space contact shadows — adds fine detail shadows under small objects and at long distances
• Multiple blur modes — Gaussian 15-tap, Gaussian 5-tap, or Box blur with edge-preserving options
• Cascade blending — smooth transitions between shadow cascades
• Transparent receiver plane — cast soft shadows onto transparent floors
• Overlay shadows — tint or stylize shadowed pixels with a post-opaque color pass
• Profiles system — save and swap shadow presets via ScriptableObject profiles
• Full scripting API — singleton access, runtime preset switching, per-property control
• Performance options — downsampling, frame-skip, loop optimization for mobile and VR

Requirements

Next Steps

• Quick Start — get Umbra running in your scene in two steps
• Settings Reference — detailed description of every inspector option
• Scripting Support (C#) — control shadows at runtime from code