No, seriously, why are they pro only? I mean, when i think about it, it’s something that many good engines have. I mean many free engines too. I don’t really get that why would i pay 1500 dollars just to get good shadows in my 'lil indie game test.
Well, if you don’t get why you would pay it, then it is not worth it to you. No big deal, many great games do not have realtime shadows.
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
Many free game engines have shadows but they’re also lacking in other areas like their editor etc. And because they’re lacking in certain areas is the reason why we chose Unity.
The Unity guys need to hold back on some features in order to encourage users to upgrade to Pro. The shadows would’ve been one of the easiest (and superficial) features for them to disable… I suppose they could’ve disabled sound instead but then we’d have threads asking why they disabled sound when other free engines have sound.
In summary: Well they’ve gotta disable something! 
big laugh, you’re SOOOOO wrong Veli.
It’s also disabled because RenderTargets are.
The Shadows require the use of RenderTargets, and so if you disable RenderTargets you are going to have to disable Shadows. If you don’t disable RenderTargets than it’s near impossible to disable PostFX without creating loopholes.
They can’t just enable Shadows without opening up a massive piece of what you get with Pro. Otherwise they would have to fight with loopholes and workarounds of a more artificially blocked system.
Veli is right, in relative terms. A person will pay what something is worth to them.
Market value is something else entirely.
I’d be interested to know what my game would like with realtime shadows - but, I really don’t see it as a big thing. If you are just worrying about shadows to make your game look more realisitic, then maybe you need more game mechanics rather than looks. There is a lot of other useful stuff with pro as well - but I’ve seen some pretty amazing stuff with the standard edition. The standard package has so much uber stuff around to play with as is. Very possible to knock up some awesome stuff with it.
EDIT : yay, 100th post!
If basic shadows are all you need, just whip up a stencil shadow script and attach it to your convex model!
I think there is even an example that’s been uploaded to do just that as well!
The Stencil Shadow Script mentioned that was created a while back stil requires Unity pro as it uses render textures. Honestly I don’t know why anyone is complaining about these shadows and lack there of in Unity Free. Unity Free has to have something omitted and by omitting post processing effects they have to disable shadows as it all uses the render texture ability. I would suspect that most of the Unity Free users who feel the need for real time shadows did not grow up in the 8/32bit n64/ps1/early ps2 era. If you did grow up in that era go back and check out the best rated games on those systems. You’ll notice that some don’t even have the best graphics for the system but are highest rated because of the gameplay. If you haven’t grown up in that era, perhaps you should try some classic gaming to see why shadows really don’t mean much in the big picture of things. If you still feel the need for shadows I suspect you should rethink your choice for Unity. If you can’t afford/don’t wish to invest in Pro, then it’s your job to find a solution to fit your needs. Unity can’t give everything away, of course something would be disabled. You didn’t expect to get everything for free did you?
Also I would like to note that most games do not have many objects on screen with real time shadows at a time. Most of it is baked. So real time shadows in Unity would be good for using Beast and its automatic light mapper, but in the end, only a few objects on screen can have real time shadows without using Pro’s Deferred Lighting or else there will be massive performance loss. Lighting/shadowing are very resource intensive.
Mesh based shadows though would work without pro without any problem. And a plentitude of games have shown that they work arather well in correspondingly targeted games.
in u3, realtime shadow for free wouldn’t gain you anything but shadow for a single directional light because thats the only thing that casts shadow at all in forward rendering.
point lights and more than 1 light only cast shadow with deferred rendering which is pro only
Do the “blob shadow beneath your character” trick 
If there were realtime shadows in Unity Free people would complain about PostFx, cause it is not possible to create good looking games without PostFX. And if PostFX were there also, people would complain about the watermark…
Of course there are situations were realtime shadows are a nice feature and the Unity implementation works fine, but even with pro you might abandon those for certain reasons.
This is not ps1/ps2 era anymore though.
yeah but your funding and thus art force likely is on the scale of it, not on the scale of the 20M budgets todays AA+ games have.
Using deferred rendering and realtime shadows without top class art and visual effects is nicely put bullshit.
bringing up comparisions to other engines will fail cause unity is not other engines, full realtime shadows are available in deferred only, forward rendering has a single directional light source causing dynamic shadows, nothing else.
I think Shadows should be a Free feature as well.
On the other side i would make Mouseinput a Pro only feature.
Deal?! No? Okay…
Fremachuca, I wish I could unsee that creepy avatar.
All things considered, Unity is extremely amazing for a low price like 1500 USD. On top of that you get a free version with pretty much all of the important features intact. Some people just don’t know how good they have it. We didn’t have amazing tools like this for development 20 years ago, especially for free.
I think a lot of society in general is pretty egocentric. There is a disconnect with the amount of hard work that was put into creating Unity. People only see the finished product and forget what it took to bring it to that point.
Exactly,
And yes we are no longer in the early eras of gaming. The point is if you have grown up through it, you know the tricks to avoid real time shadows and/or you understand that gameplay is foremost to graphics. Graphics are not important. Check out some stats on Minecraft, that game should be failing with it’s non HD graphics. It has 8-bit style textures and 3d blocky graphics but its taking the web by storm.
The thing is, if you have a game project and have certain needs for that project, you need to find a product that fit’s your needs. If Unity Free does not but Pro does, then you have to buy Pro. If you cannot afford pro, you either have to deal without or find another product. What is so difficult about this concept? If you need something, it is up to you to find a solution that covers as many needs as you have and balance your project to deal with any shortcomings.