Render Shadows Toggle box missing

[Alex_G1]

I’m currently using Unity 2020.3 (Built-In) and I cannot find the “Render Shadows” toggle box under the camera.
In fact the camera options are bare by comparison to what is in the video.

From what I have been able to find the only option I can see is to turn shadows of on a per-object basis which in my case means I will need to duplicate the ground and put it on the “Minimap” layer so that it can have shadows turned off while the copy that the main camera renders is still turned on.

This seems ludicrous. I assume there is an option I am missing to get shadows to render on the main camera but not the minimap camera.

[Alex_G1]

I found two work arounds, neither of which are perfect for me.

Both of which involve adding a script to the minimap camera.

The first adds

  [SerializeField] Shader _shader;

    void OnPreRender()
    {
        GetComponent<Camera>().SetReplacementShader(_shader, "");
    }

using Unlit/Color shader in the inspector field.

Resulting in

which is quite dark but i guess that is to be expected when you remove all lighting.

The second comes from Fariborzzn’s answer on: Minimap with no shadow? - Unity Answers

Resulting in

Which seems to produce a strange gradient across objects due to lighting being applied but shadows having a length of zero.

Neither of these seems all that great a solution.

[Yitzchak_Cohen]

Hi there,
Where it says render path, can you change it from Use Graphics Settings? I think it is defaulting to the project settings.

What are the other options there?

[Alex_G1]

Hi Yitzchak

Under the render path option for the camera are the following:

of which only Forward and Legacy Vertex Lit are allowed on an orthographic camera (the others defer back to forward)

[Yitzchak_Cohen]

If you choose forward, does it give you the shadows option?

[Alex_G1]

Nope

I presume I either have to write my own shader and us the .SetReplacementShader() option or I have to setup a render pathway. Neither of which I know anything about sadly.

[Yitzchak_Cohen]

Well you could revert back to a slightly older version of Unity where it still exists. Really not a good option. I wonder if this is a bug or if it’s purposeful. Are you using a 2020.3 LTS version? Which version exactly are you using?

Another idea only render a light source that is directly overhead, then there will be minimal shadows but still lit.

Did you have a render pipeline in your project? Or some other graphics setting changed?

[Alex_G1]

I am using 2020.3.23f1

As far as I know I am not using a render pipeline other than the built-in one.

And I don’t believe I has manually changed any graphics settings.

Given the objective of this course is to learn Networking and Mirror I am just going to move on and leave it as is.

I’m sure there is a solution but it isn’t important enough to prioritize at this time.

Thanks for your time in trying to solve this.