Issue with shadows

I am using a flashlight in the interior of a dark building, and the problem is that when I modify the "Near Plane" range on the Spot Light of my flashlight so that the light does not pass through the wall, it does not work at all distances where the player is. At a certain distance the Near Plane range value works, but then I move closer and the light goes through the wall again, I adjust it for that position, but when I move backwards the same thing happens. I have also tried setting the bias up and down with no results.
Here I'm behind a wall but the light goes through:


It also gives me a weird shadow of the game objects:


Don't know what else could it be...

I'm using built-in render pipeline, Unity 2020.3.5.

 

check you shadow quality setting for soft shadow / hard shadow and verify that the scene objects have cast shadows on

 

Yes it has enabled soft/hard shadows. My objects also have the cast shadows on.

The problem is that when I adjust the "Near Plane" range in the Spot Light of my flashlight it works and the light doesn't pass through the wall, but when I go closer to the wall it does pass so I have to adjust it again to make it work at that distance. But then again if I move backwards it will pass through the wall.

 

Also the shadows look like they are floating while pointing with the flashlight

 

I have to agree the Unity spot light is not very good with shadows
the shadow is hard regardless of settings

the only ideai have is to override unity shadows and use a custom shader that does soft shadow casting

example below casted shadow forward pass bias from the unity ball
its still not perfect to override the default unity shadows but perhaps better that the very hard edges from point lights

also for the flashlight, a good cookie texture may help a lot

 

Right, I'll see what I can do.
Thanks.

I added a Point light and the shadows are normal:



But I just changed the spot light of the flashlight to a point light and it has the same weird shadow effect

 

@kristijonas_unity sorry to tag you, but maybe you know?

 

Is this https://www.albertford.com/shadowcasting/ helpful?

 

Thanks a lot!
That solved my issue with the light passing through the walls. Yes I'm using built-in render pipeline but when I was adjusting the near plane it didn't work at all of the distances.

However I tried a lot of tweaking with the cascade and shadow distance but it gives me the same result when with the floating shadows. Actually when tweaking the cascades I don't see any changes to the shadows.

 

Here is a video to explain it better:

 

hello sir
would it be possible in future to expose this thru a progrma / keyword in future

 

This is the only thread I've seen talking about floaty shadows.

Sorry to necro post. I've been searching for what feels like hours now. Anyone have a fix for the floaty shadows? I'm having the EXACT same problem as OP. I don't know how to fix it.

 

Can't see anything wrong on this picture. If the light was at the camera position, you wouldn't see any shadows because they'd be hidden behind what you see. Since the flash light position is slightly different from the camera position, you can see the shadows but they'll always be near to what you look at. The shadows will look like a silhouette of the shadow casters, like on the picture. You can also see the same effect here at 0:59:

The only thing that could be improved are
- Soft shadows instead of hard shadows
- Maybe add some other light sources, some kind of global illumination or just a brighter ambient color so that they are not entirely black.

 

Why does it do that though?

Here's a small video on what is happening. Similar to the previous issues talked about and even what shows in the video posted above.

But then

Here is what it looks like in Scene View


It looks a little weird when turning around a humanoid model




What causes this? I'm just curious if its purely a POV type thing and different angles would show it rendering "correctly" or if this is actually an issue with shadow rendering due to using multiple cameras for a fps?

 

In the video it looks as if some objects (trees, fence) are only casting shadows but not receiving any (I think, there is a checkbox for that). But hard to tell. Your screenshots look fine to me - especially the last one. This is what I would expect. What would you expect?

Is it the lack of soft shadows that is bothering you?

 

It's hard to tell without it in motion.

And I think that's my issue. its perspective that's messing me up.

The video is basically whats happening. If I look in scene view, your image is what I get. A normal shadow. If I place a point light outside of the character object (like a lamp or street pole) then shadows appear fine. Especially when moving away from it. Only when I have the light be a child of my player object do they appear as they do in the video.

I've even moved the same light away from my player object while attached to my character and shadows move accordingly. I've just never paid attention to flashlight shadows.

I've never been more confused by a subject than shadows.