Shadow Receiver URP (Directional & Additional Light Shadows)

Shadow Receiver uses a transparent shader to render real-time shadows onto any 3D object. The shadows can be cast from any real-time light in Unity!

Made for the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) using Shader Graph.

Legacy support for Built-in Render Pipeline (BiRP) added in V2.2!

🧾 Features

👉 Real-Time shadow receiving/casting onto invisible objects

👉 Directional Light & Additional Lights support

👉 Forward+ support for more than 8 lights (experimental)

👉 Pick the shadow color

👉 Pick the shadow transparency

👉 Support for multiple shadow cascades

👉 Support for soft shadows and hard shadows

👉 Tested with AR with ARCore/ARKit/AR Foundation, Niantic Lightship, and Vuforia

👉 Works in VR/MR headsets, like Quest 3 and Pico 4!

👉 Made in Shader Graph

👉 Customizable shaders for custom effects

👉 Support for all devices

👉 Optimized for performance on mobile devices!

📱 Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality

Shadow Receiver is mostly used in AR to render shadows on planes detected with plane detection. This way, an AR object can have realistic real-time shadows in AR. This creates a more immersive AR experience.

Of course, feel free to use this for any other project you see fit!

🎥 Video Compositing

Shadow Receiver can be used well with video compositing in Unity. As long as your video is able to cast shadows in Unity, you can get real-time shadows.

🛠 Technicals

Only works in Universal Render Pipelines!

Base support added for Built-in Render Pipeline!

Tested in Unity 2020.3LTS, 2021.3LTS, 2022.3LTS, Unity 6 (2023.3)

Works using 1 real-time directional light and unlimited additional lights (in Forward+).

Work on any device. Fully tested on Android, IOS, and Windows.

Free version available without support for transparent shadows, soft shadows, or shadow cascades

Demo project available on GitHub