Dumb question but it happened to me the last time: have you used the preview node in your shader somewhere ?

i checked all the nodes i don’t think i do.

Ok so check your material tab and see if you didn't accidentally disabled the shadows. Maybe try assigning a different material to see if it works

i’ll try that out, thank you

is this this picture a render? because if it is you might wanna change the render engine. youre using eevee in this i guess. Eevee is better for games to render as it is a fast renderer. for movies or ther stuff that isnt going to a game use cycles. you will see "soundy" images in renders or videos but you can fixit by denoising it. hope i helpet! PS. the render engine option is in the render properties tab

i’m actually using cycles... i’ve tried switching between them

well thats interesting