Question Everything is pink after building

Hey guys! I've been looking for answers to a similar error with no guaranteed results. They usually say "reset your shaders in built-in shader settings" but I've tried with no luck whatsoever... I'm not using HDRP, my tier settings are set by default, and my shaders, have been reset back to their original default, and I'm still getting this:



in this particular case, camera movement is smooth and everything, it all just looks like this, which is interesting, because in other occasions, there's usually no input, or extremely laggy, so I'm somewhat amazed at how this case it actually moves smoothly.

this is a reference of the image in the editor

I'm not exactly asking for an answer that solves this issue (but I'd gladly appreciate it lol), I just want to know what causes this sort of issue, why does the editor show the graphics nicely, but the build doesn't? Any idea what to keep in mind to avoid this from happening?
I'm just completely lost here and I don't want to get rid of this project I've been working for so long now.

 

ah, here's the everything pink screenshot: And this is from another project I've been working in parallel.

 

Well I had the same issue couple days ago and I did have to readd "UI/Default" and "UI/DefaultETC1" back to the always included shaders, but if you tried resetting it already that probably won't be it.

 

it definitely isn't that. I did realize that the issue would go away after I removed a few character models off of it. I'm using some placeholder models from Daz3D, and I realized having one in the scene is good, having 2 in the scene is what causes this issue. In other forums, they mentioned a 4gb texture limit. I'm not sure if this is the cause. On one side I'm glad that it's not the baked light map, and that the inclusion of default shaders isn't it either (but it did suck having to replace them again). But still this is something I'm curious about, in previous versions of Unity (I think it was the 2018 version?) this wasn't an issue (considering that I released a demo with 5 Daz3D models in it as well). I still don't know what the issue is, or what's a more permanent fix (even tho they are placeholder models, I'd like my concepts to actually play as intended without having to remove them).