Hello, Is anyone else having trouble casting ground shadows in Poser 5? I've built numerous successful scenes in Poser 4 with three global lights (Main, Reflection, and Ambient), with only the Main light having shadows turned on. I use DAZ's Cyclorama backdrop to accept the ground shadows. These scenes render properly in Poser 4. But with the same scene in Poser 5, figures cast no ground shadows, so all of the figures look like they're floating. I've looked in the manual, reduced the scene to just one figure and the Cyclorama, and tried numerous settings on the Main light's parameters and properties, both shadow mapped and ray-traced, with no visible improvement. Can anyone help? Thanks, Rick

It's me again. I meant to add that I've tried both Firefly and P4 rendering, draft and production, and I'm running SR2.1. Rick

I'm sure there's a better way, but I've just been creating a new "ground" just above the regular one. I've just used a plane and set materials however I wanted. That works anyway.

Have u tried raytracing? I've used the cyclorama and produced ground shadows...if I make a render crap enough .jpg maybe renderosity will upload it...

Thanks for your responses. I started testing again, from square one, and found that ground shadows work fine in a default scene. I investigated, and noticed that the scene includes three special cameras to match the three lights. They're called: Shadow Lite 1 Cam Shadow Lite 2 Cam Shadow Lite 3 Cam These are the shadow mapping cameras built by Poser, and I've used them before to zoom in and improve shadow edges. But I've just taken them for granted otherwise. However, in scenes I've built in P5, these three cameras aren't listed, and/or don't exist. These scenes are also the ones where ground shadows don't display. This brings up two questions: 1. Why doesn't the scene I'm working on include these three additional cameras? 2. How do I create them, or copy them into the scene? Thanks, Rick

Good question - and I'm not sure (partly cos I haven't used the default lighting for, well, anything but very basic test renders). Are your lights set to raytraced or shadowmapped shadows? (I'm wondering if the "shadowmap cameras" are only created after turning a light into shadowmap from raytrace...? try switching the lights back and forth and see if cameras appear?)

I wondered about that too, and tried both raytraced and shadowmapped shadows, and various kinds of renders to trick P5 into creating the shadowmap cameras, but nothing I did seemed to do the trick. I ended up saving my figures and animations and re-creating the scene in the default, empty scene. It wasn't that much work, and now I'm a happy guy. Still curious though: some day I hope to find out how to create them on command, in case I run into this scenario again. Thanks for the suggestions and help. I hope I can return the favor some day. Ricky

I'm already returning the favour - it's a community thing. I've learnt a lot reading posts here, so when there's a chance I might be able to give back... :) Everybody wins :)

Have you thought about maybe adding another light, seeing if it has a camera, and if so then set that light up like your current shadowing light and then get rid of the first one? I'm wondering if something to do with the import of the P4 scene caused the light to not be defined properly for P5. The P5 manual seems to say explicitly that there will be one camera for every light.

Attached Link: http://www.wildfiregames.com

Well, I got ground shadows to work in P5 (SR2.1), and I'll tell you how I did it. This thread caught my eye because I have had problems with ground shadows in the past (and I still do). I noticed you have something up top about DAZ's Cyclorama, and I don't have that. So'll just use the default ground as my example. So first thing I did was: Display=>Guides=>Ground Plane (Ctrl+G) Select the light you want to cast the shadows Go to the parameters and turn the shadow up (something like .750) Go to the properties tab and turn on the shadows. I also found that this worked with both spot and infinate. It also works with Ray Trace or Depth map Shadows (but you must use the firefly renderer and turn raytracing on) So it works for me :) The thing I've been struggling with is trying to create a shadow material, that doesn't have any existance except for the shadow that was created on its surface. It would be a combination shadow and object mask, for a alpha channel. 3dmax has a material called Matte/Shadow that does this, and I do realize that Poser is not 3dmax, but if anyone could help me with this please email me. Wijitmaker@juno.com I hope I helped you Ricky, but if not... good luck ;)