Once I finished importing the background into the scene, the street surface stopped receiving shadows (the shadows were there in preliminary renders until final assembly). I checked that all 22 low level lights and 6 spots were still set to cast shadows & all shadows set to full. The characters and clothing had shadows turned on, and I had use shadows turned on for the render (I only know of those 4 settings that should affect a render). I thought about burning them in in post, but finally decided to post as pure poser. Have to set it aside now, because I have to work on my taxes this next week, but I may have time to dig into it later on (unless I get tied up into another of the scenes I've got in the works). For now, I've just re-cropped to minimize the flaw. Camera angle was deliberate, by the way - first thing I set up after assembling the basic setting, and I liked how the framing worked so much it was the main thing that decided me to go ahead with the scene and try for a full render. Poser 4/ProPak on P4 2.0Ghz WinXP and 512Megs of memory. I really appreciate the comments, btw - Thanks! Jerry