Enable shadows

Each Light in a scene can cast the following types of shadows:

• Real-time shadows. Unity stores the shadows cast from each Light in shadow map textures. The textures update each frame; shadows move when the lights move.
• Baked shadows. The Unity lightmapperA tool in Unity that bakes lightmaps according to the arrangement of lights and geometry in your scene. More info
  See in Glossary stores the shadows received by each GameObject in static lightmap textures, shadow mask textures, or Light Probes. Shadows don’t move when the lights move.

To configure which type of shadows a Light casts, use the Inspector window of the Light component. For more information, refer to the following:

• Setting a light as real-time or baked.
• Lighting Mode, if you set the Light Mode of a Light to Mixed.

Set a GameObject to receive shadows

GameObjects receive real-time shadows by default.

To set a static GameObject so it receives shadows from baked shadows, follow these steps:

1. Select the GameObject.
2. In the Inspector window, in the Mesh RendererA mesh component that takes the geometry from the Mesh Filter and renders it at the position defined by the object’s Transform component. More info
   See in Glossary component, enable Contribute Global Illumination.
3. Set Receive Global Illumination to Lightmaps.

Set a GameObject to shadow other GameObjects

Follow these steps:

1. Select the GameObject.
2. In the Mesh Renderer component of the Inspector window, set Cast shadows to On.

Configure shadows

To configure shadows for your whole project or a specific scene, refer to the following:

• Lighting window reference
• Graphics settings
• Universal Render Pipeline (URP) asset reference
• Universal Renderer asset

Additional resources

• Shadows in URP
• Shadows in the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP)
• Use shadows in a custom URP shader