I noticed that when you bake an Irradiance Volume in Eevee, the probes aren’t able to cast realtime shadows on the environment from objects moving around the scene. I was wondering if this is a permanent limitation that’s never going to be lifted or if there is some trick to get around it.
First of all to explain why I’d even imagine this could work: Irradiance volumes contain those little dots which, when baked, estimate the bounce light level at the position of each dot. So to my understanding, each dot is pretty much a point light automatically placed there by the engine with the proper light color and intensity to match the lighting it represents. Couldn’t each of those samples also cast shadows? Obviously it wouldn’t be very accurate but still as accurate as the probe itself!
As for why I’m looking into this: Shadows are a minor detail if we’re talking about a small amount of bounce lighting baked by the probe. The issue is if you want to use emission surfaces in Eevee like you can in Cycles: The irradiance volume will bake the light coming from your lamp just right, however this won’t also cast a shadow which makes the light very unrealistic.
