What's the plan for shadow caster 2d and tilemaps?

Right now if I add a ShadowCaster2D to a Tilemap it will use the bounds of the tilemap to create shadows instead of using the individual polygons that make up that tilemap.

I would expect shadows to look like this...



The above is created using Smart Lighting 2D. To achieve this effect using the 2D URP I'd have to create a separate ShadowCaster2D game objects and manually fit their polygons to each polygon in the tilemap. That is not a feasible solution. Are there any plans to update this?

 

I hope they plan to extend the ShadowCaster2D soon, right now it can not really do much and is rather awkward for top-down games...

something you can do for now is directly messing around in the URP scripts or doing reflections, here is a thread where people adapted ShadowCaster2D to work for tilemaps:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/shadow-caster-2d-not-working-on-tilemap.793803/

 

I'm hoping this workaround won't be needed in the near future. I would like to see this functionality out of the box. Add a ShadowCaster2D to a Tilemap/TilemapCollider2D/CompositeCollider2D. Boom. Shadows.

 

I just can't believe that there is STILL no support for shadow on tilemap... Or any official announcement that it will be any time soon.

 

Hi @Xiangting_Su has there been any update to this? I'd love to be able to set up lighting properly in a tile based environment.

 

I would love if one could simply add some shadow caster component to a tilemap with a TilemapCollider2D or CompositeCollider2D, and than that collider gets already recognized for the shadow generation

with this:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/script-for-generating-shadowcaster2ds-for-tilemaps.906767/
you can generate shadow casters for all open tilemaps in scene that have CompositeCollider2D using a button in the UI

that works aswell but is a bit less intuitive then simply marking the shadow casting objects and have anything beyond that automatic

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something I noticed when setting up a top down scene with 2D shadows, is that certain objects are not really supposed to cast shadows in every direction...
and different objects should have a different shadow length

for instance for a cliff wall, shadows should act differently whether the light is on top of the cliff, or below

here a quick example:
Light below cliff:

light above cliff:

for the first image, it is fine that everything above the cliff is shadowed, since the light would not reach there with the source being below
for the second image, it would be nicer if the rocks either dont cast a shadow at all, or one that has a smaller length, as in only the area close to the rocks being shadowed

I really dont know how something like this would be best presented to the user, since the shadow direction and length would need to be part of the tile info, generating a shadow caster from collider alone would no longer be enough...

maybe this info could be defined in Rule Tiles, with each rule having an advanced definition option to declare which direction casts which length of shadows?

beyond that, just shadow length in general would be appreciated, makes no sense for a tree and a bush to have shadows of the same length (while right now, I think every 2D shadow caster always has an infinite length)

 

It's been like 7 months... what's the status of tilemap shadow? It this ever going to happen really? It's been so many YEARS that this was requested.. (now I forgot because it has been sooo long) No updates, and still no tilemap shadow?