Umbra Soft Shadows - Better Directional & Contact Shadows for URP v10.0 (29 Jan 2026) introduces advanced shadow rendering techniques for the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) in Unity, delivering highly realistic directional light shadows. The pack enhances shadow quality by implementing contact hardening, which produces sharper, more defined shadows near light sources and softer, more diffuse ones at a distance—mimicking real-world lighting behavior.
It adds contact shadows to capture fine details on small objects, both at close and far distances, allowing developers to either blend them into the main shadow texture or render them as a separate pass. Contact shadows are supported for both directional and point lights.
Key features include:
- Configurable Shadow Appearance: Adjust shadow smoothness and style to match project-specific visual needs.
- Contact Hardening: Enables crisp shadows near light casters and smooth transitions at distance.
- Stylized Shadows: Support for texture mapping and posterization effects, ideal for toon-style rendering.
- Cascade Blending: Smooths transitions between shadow cascades, reducing visible edges and improving visual continuity.
- Profiles: Store and manage shadow settings in reusable profile assets for easy switching or runtime configuration.
- Optimization Options: Performance improvements such as loop and frame skip optimizations that reuse shadow map textures from previous frames.
- Transparent Receiver Plane for XR: A custom Shader Graph shader enables soft shadow rendering on transparent planes or ground surfaces, commonly used in XR applications, with a demo scene provided.
Available for Unity 6, this resource pack was nominated for Best Artistic Tool at the 16th Unity Awards.
2026-02-02 00:00:00-update version:Umbra Soft Shadows - Better Directional & Contact Shadows for URP v10.0 (29 Jan 2026)
