suspect it's not so much the shadows as it is the shading Yeah -- surface angle. I can see that. Something you can try aside from that, then... give it an ambient colour other than black, but use a darker texture. A darkened texture combined with an ambient colour will produce a still normal colour, but one that's less sensitive to light angle -- look at the back panel wall of my Inperial Window prop for an exmaple of this being done (although that one admittedly shows a little too much JPEG compression that wouldn't be visible except by the ambience, but if you don't compress that's not a problem)