Shadows determined by Normals, not by Geometry: is this possible?

Unity Engine
1

Dear Community,

Is there a way to cast a shadow whose shape is determined by the normals, rather than by the geometry of the object it is cast upon?

See the following pic for an explanation:

1152×648 25.3 KB

Thanks!

2

hmm, in general something else that could be done to influence the shape of the shadow, that is not geometry?

3

Historically we’d be modifying the shadow geo ourselves in the shadowcaster pass. But I stopped writing shaders in Unity in a serious manner back in Unity 4x so YMMV

4

Thank you hippocoder. Writing shaders myself is beyond my skills – I also looked in the Asset Store but I could not find anything useful.

I’d just like to know if what I asked is theoretically possible – if so, I can hire somebody to do the work. What would you say?

Thanks a lot!

5

It’s not that simple.
Even in Forward Pass shadows projected on a whole screen, and shadow texture destroys after that.
So you have to copy and store shadow texture to be able to write your own shadow receiver.

Or you can create another screen buffer in order to store shadow offsets, so you can rewrite unity shadow projecting shader.

Or the better variant is to achieve your goal with geometry and point of view.