Normal maps for 3D shadows

Hevens

I’m currently tinkering with lighting on the Spine-Unity platform example, and I’ve noticed that while the Hero casts shadows, shadows don’t cast on him. No matter what objects are between the light and him, he remains almost luminously visible, and the pix lit/ vertex lit shaders only make him totally dark.

While researching this issue, I’ve come across very different solutions that may or may not work without much rhyme or reason. URP and building custom shaders seems like a bag of worms I don’t want to get into unless I have to.

I’ve also seen discussion about normal maps. I’ve never really had a reason to mess with normal maps before, and am not sure if this is the solution I’m looking for. I’m hoping not to have to spend weeks or months chasing down wild geese just to make the sprites look right in a 3D environment. Is normal mapping the solution to my issue? If not, does anyone know what is?

Misaki

Hevens Using normal maps is a different matter from receiving shadows. For example, the Spine/Sprite/Vertex Lit shader supports normal maps, but not cannot receive per-pixel realtime shadows. If you want your skeleton to receive shadows, please use the Spine/Sprite/Pixel Lit shader. This is briefly mentioned in the video below from 14:43 and it would be helpful:

Hevens

Misaki Two for two! You're an absolute godsend, thank you!

Harald

@Hevens Glad to hear it helped. Please also always have a look at the spine-unity documentation page:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-unity#Shaders
In order to receive shadows, a pixel-lit shader is required. In this documentation section under (10) Spine/Sprite you can see Spine/Sprite/Pixel Lit, which reads:

Pixel-lit variant of Spine/Sprite/Vertex Lit shader. The only shader that receives per-pixel realtime shadows. This shader always writes to the z-buffer (ZWrite is enabled as it uses a ForwardAdd pass).

and the pix lit/ vertex lit shaders only make him totally dark.

Then you likely have set up the normals incorrectly. Best set Fixed Normals at the Material.

I’ve also seen discussion about normal maps. I’ve never really had a reason to mess with normal maps before, and am not sure if this is the solution I’m looking for.

What problem do you want to solve? If it's just pixel lit shaders being to dark, then using normalmaps is not the solution.