Question Cast real time shadow only from a separate light source (avoiding Directiona Light)?

Hi, in HDRP I'd like to recreate a shadows settings like mario odyssey, where every objects in the environment casts shadows from the directional light, but Mario not; he casts the shadow from another separate source, and ONLY from it (avoiding directional light).
Here a screenshot, blue arrows = directional light, red arrow = the other source of light, from top. In this case is perfect becaouse you have the player's shadow always under the player while he jumps.
Thanks

 

The lights have a culling mask. Exclude mario from the mask and have a seperate spotlight which just casts shadows on mario and culls the rest

 

You can use light layers for that. Just put Mario on a separate Light Layer and assign it to the dedicated light (you might need to toggle advanced settings in the first foldout of the light inspector)

 

It works but the shadow is almost invisible even if i increase the intensity fo the spotlight to max. Probably something messy with my global volume settings.

Thanks

 

Layers won't work really since it'll be physically correct, and mario's is not. Mario just has a blob shadow technique but instead of it being a blob its using a render texture. The render texture is a black and white render of just mario. You do not use a camera for that or anything. You can draw the model directly to the rendertexture.

The things you need to know for this to work:

• rendering meshes to a render texture without using a camera
• rendering a blob shadow under player's feet on the floor
• making a shader for blob shadow so that it uses a different texture

The reason it's important to not use a second camera is because it will kill HDRP performance and this technique never does use a second camera anyway.

Blob shadow is a widely understood concept.

 

Thanks! I understand the concepts, but i really can't figure out how to do this. I'm new on Unity and never use render texture before. According to the docs rendertexture work with camera, i tried and understand how it works for simple purpose like show on a texture (a screen in game) what a camera is looking.