Question Creating a Light with shadows programmatically

So I'm trying to figure out why I cannot get shadows working when I create a Light at runtime.

Light light = gameObject.AddComponent<Light>();

light.type = LightType.Directional;

light.shadows = LightShadows.Soft;

So this is what I used, nothing fancy.

When I run this piece of code I do get light, as I see my objects being lit. Just no shadows.
So here's the weird part (I think), when I select the directional light in the editor the shadows appears!

And yes lights I create in the editor do have schadows when I enable them.

So my question is, what am I missing?
Do I need to do a call somewhere or at the light?

pictures

 

Great to hear, glad I could help!

 

Thanks I got it working now!

So the documentation for HDRP (and other packages) will always be separate from the basic unity API documentation?

Also one other thing I discovered which I'm not sure is mentioned somewhere has to do with creating asset bundles.
When you create a separate asset bundle for lights, you have to add the namespace "HighDefinition" to your asset bundle script.

Otherwise you cannot find "HDAdditionalLightData" component on the game object at runtime.

Because it will be bundled without that component.

Although the editor will show it when you select the light (maybe it adds it when you select a light?)

 

I had to do similar dances and spins and moonwalks back when I was generating HDRP reflection probes I'm not sure its immediately obvious to people there's API for this as Unity classically didn't have 2 components each time to worry about before.

Also hard to communicate nuance like that. I guess google will solve it in the end!

 

this is hilariously undocumented

 

Well interestingly though, I do not refer to the lights directly, but a prefab game object containing one or more game objects with the light component on it. It might still make sense but it isn't really that transparent since I wasn't directly referring to the "HDAdditionalLightData" class.

 

Could you give some clarity on why HDLight objects get added in a different way than every other type of Unity component?

I'm confused about a few things:
1) What the Light component actually does now vs what HDAdditionalLightData does.
2) Why turning an object into a light in HDRP required using a different method than any other type of component in Unity (GameObject.AddComponent<T> and GameObject.AddHDLight), which seems super hacky and outside the paradigm for components Unity has established for years.

If HD Lights are really that different, maybe just using a wholey different component would be clearer to the user, instead of using the Light component as some dummy terminal that is sometimes driven by a secret component with nothing in its inspector + poorly documented codepaths that are required to run to programatically generate the lights, that is completely different than the path one would use to add any other component in Unity.

 

I've been playing around with the HDAdditionalLightData and what I can't access is for example the "Display Emissive Mesh" from an Area Light from the C# script. I'm using the script to create several Area Lights and I would love to see their mesh on runtime by default ... I've not been able how to access this parameter though the HDAdditionalLightData nor any info on the forums ... any hint ?

And what about the Color Temperature ? I can do find the EnableColorTemperature() method, but not how to set the actual temperature... ?¿

 

Anyone know how to access properties as for ex. "Display Emissive Mesh" from an Area Light from the C# script ? I can't find the API interface ... Thanks for any tips ...