Unity Game Optimization - Third Edition

Using real-time shadows responsibly

As mentioned previously, shadowing can easily become one of the largest consumers of draw calls and Fill Rate, so we should spend the time to tweak these settings until we get the performance and/or graphical quality we need.

There are multiple important settings for shadowing that can be found under Edit | Project Settings | Quality | Shadows. As far as the Shadows option is concerned, Soft Shadows are expensive, Hard Shadows are cheap, and No Shadows are free. Shadow Resolution, Shadow Projection, Shadow Distance, and Shadow Cascades are also important settings that affect the performance of our shadows:

Shadow Distance is a global multiplier for runtime shadow rendering. There is little point in rendering ...