Point light shadow - Character appears to be floating, but it's not

I have been overlooking this problem for many months now, as I have not been able to find solutions for this specific issue anywhere.

75925-floating-character.pngCharacter looks like it’s floating

As you can see in the screenshot, the character seems to be floating, but it’s not. His feet are touching the ground - even passing through it a little bit.

I’m aware that by increasing the option “bias” below “shadow” on a light, the shadow starts appearing farther away from the objects.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Even with bias at Zero, the shadow is still not projected exactly where the object touches the ground.

You can achieve this floating effect by putting any thin enough object far from a Point Light. In the screenshot above, the point light has a range of 7.

For walls and pillars, which are thicker, the shadow still starts under the mesh, so this is not a problem.
For the feet of the character, however, that is quite disconcerting. It makes the illusion that the character is always above the ground when walking, never touching it.

Has someone else gone through this? I’d like to know if there’s a solution or a workaround.

Thanks!

Ps.: For the Spot Light shadows that doesn’t happen (shadows begin exactly where the meshes are placed), but I can’t use a Spot Light to simulate a torch light.

EDIT: You can “fix” the problem by setting the bias via a script to a negative number. Keep in mind the shadow acne so you can use the culling mask to choose which objects are affected by the point light. Use the [ExecuteInEditMode] attribute to see results in the editor.

Not sure if this is a bug with point lights but I believe it’s related to the thickness/thinness of the model…

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I have modeled a cooking pot and it suffers from the same problem. The point light doesn’t work even at 0 bias / minimum near plane. I’ve changed the quality settings and nothing helped. It is the model itself paired with the Point Light. The thicker model begins to correct the issue but the model should be thin as in the real world. The problem could be because it is a concave mesh however the Directional light and Spot light work as intended…Standard 1x cube for spacial reference.

Any ideas ? I don’t know any users to @ notify of this issue

I also really need help with this… did you ever find the answer? I need very tight shadows for my game.