Settings

  • Sample Preset: Choose from several softness presets to instantly have a visual of the different shadow types you can achieve.
  • Profile: Choose an already saved profile with the pre-configuration of the asset. (You can save profiles with the “Save As New Profile” button at the bottom of the asset.)

General Settings

  • Shadow Source: Which shadow generation system should be used.
  • Sample Count: Translates to the number of shadow map samples used to resolve shadows.
  • Light Size: Size of the directional light which influences the penumbra size.
  • Contact Hardening: enables the ability to produce sharper shadows near the occluders.
  • Contact Strength: the higher the value, the crisper the shadow near the occluder.
    • Knee: controls the falloff of the contact strength along the distance to the occluders.
  • Distant Spread: Makes shadows smoother when far from occluder.
  • Occluders Count: Number of shadow map samples to find occluders which improve the penumbra radius calculation.
    • Search Radius: Multiplier to the occluder search radius in texture space. A higher value creates more diffused penumbra. A lower value can produce artifacts (“soft shadow appears cut on the borders”).
  • Normals Source:
    • Determines how the world space normal is calculated. In deferred this option is ignored since Umbra will read the normal from the g-buffers. In forward you can choose between reconstructing the normal from depth texture (faster, less accurate) or request a depth+normals pass to URP (accurate but slower if the normal pass is not already being generated).

Contact Shadows

This optional feature computes shadows in screen space. It’s useful to add shadows under fine/small details or at large distances where objects are just a few pixels in size.

  • Intensity: Contact shadow intensity.
  • Distance Fade: Attenuates shadow intensity with distance to occluder.
  • Sample Count: Number of raymarch samples used.
  • Stepping: Distance between each raymarch sample.
  • Thickness Near: Used to detect a collision with an opaque object. It’s the maximum depth difference between the ray and the depth of the pixel.
  • Thickness Distance Multiplier: A multiplier applied to the thickness setting over distance. Since in the distance, the depth differences between neighbour pixels could be higher than in the short distance.
  • Jitter: Randomization applied to the start of the ray to avoid banding artifacts.
  • Start Distance: Minimum distance to the camera before applying the contact shadows effect.
  • Normal Bias: Offset applied to the ray start position based on the normal of the surface to avoid self-occlusion.
  • Vignette Size: Fades contact shadows around screen borders.
  • Injection Point: In Texture Mode, the contact shadows are rendered into the same resolved shadow texture and will be limited by the shadow max distance setting in URP. In After Opaque mode, a separate pass computes and blend the contact shadows over the camera color texture uplifting the shadow distance setting limitation.

Look

  • Style: Stylized look for shadows
  • Blur Iterations: Number of blur passes. Each blur pass increases shadow softness but reduces performance.
  • Blur Type: Specifies the blur method. Gaussian blur uses two render passes per iteration.
  • Spread: Blur kerner radius multiplier. Improves softness but can introduce artifacts.
  • Edge Tolerance: Strength of the edge weight when blurring.
  • Edge Sharpness: Makes the shadow look sharper.
  • Downscale: Downscales blur targets producing softer shadows and improving performance.
  • Edge Preserve: Prevents shadow blurring on geometry edges.
  • Edge Sharpness:
  • Blur Distance Attenuation: Distance where blur starts reducing.
    • Attenuation Length: Length of the blur attenuation.
  • Grazing Angle Attenuation: Blur reduction when viewing shadow from a grazing angle

Advanced

  • Downsample: Resolves screen space shadows in a reduced buffer or half the screen size.
  • Loop Optimization: when enabled, the actual number of texture samples is halved without affecting the coverage area. This option can improve performance while reducing very little the visual quality.
  • Frame Skip Optimization: resolves shadow texture every two frames, reusing the results from the previous frame. This option can improve performance significantly depending on the platform and scene. If camera rotates abruptly or shadows change quickly you may experience some shadow lagging.
  • Blend Cascades: enable to blend cascades on the edge of the cascade split removing the hard visual line that can be seen. When using shadow cascades in URP, increasing cascade split 1 also tends to reduce visual inconsistencies when two cascades meet in the scene. Pushing the value for the cascades will make the transition occur far from camera making the transition less noticeable.
  • Cascade Scales: although Umbra does an estimation of proper scale for the lighting calculation per cascade, the asset let you apply a scale modifier per cascade to adjust the transition even more.
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