Hello everyone. I user POser 4. And ever since i got it, i noticed that all shadows casted on characters faces or bodies, casted on their skin by their hair for example, are unclear and distorted and sometimes way to dark black, i would expect the color to be darker than the actual lighten skin but not black. .is there a way to make better cast shadows on characters skin?

LOL....I don't know, but is that Dork with long hair? Sharen

Yes, there is. Select your lights one by one, go to the parameter dials, and set the 'shadow' size to whatever you need. For example, 0.000 would be the softest shadows, and 1.000 would be very hard. It may also help to change the 'map size' parameters too. If it's still set at the default (256), you may want to change this to 1024 for better quality. You can set the shadow color by clicking on the 3rd icon on the right of the document window. If you alt-click or ctrl-click it, you get the main color picker where you can type in entries. mac PS LOL@sharen - It sure looks like dork in disguise! Maybe he's finally 'come out the closet'

heyas; er, mac; that's not quite right. there is a shadow (strength) dial that can be set to 0 (no cast shadows) to 1 (full shadows). .5 would be a light shadow, for example. the 'softness' of the light (infinite lights, anyway) is sorta controlled via the shadow map size. small map sizes (like 256) will give softer, or just plain blocky shadows. larger maps sizes will give shadows with sharper edges. erm, the shadow colour with the background/foreground colour things? that is for the 'fake' ground shadow colour, which has nothing to do with the rendered image. the shadow colour for objects is controlled via the 'ambient' colour chip. use black for completely black shadows. lighter colours will cause shadows to 'glow' to some degree. (bright colours will glow a lot!) try the shadow strength on the lights, and set it to .9 or .75 to get less black shadows; that ought to take care of things for you, tebop.

Mmmm... you're right on the last point, bloodsong, the shadow color thing. I don't know what I was thinking of. But on the 1st point, the shadow strength dial, that's what I was talking about. I said shadow 'size'. I meant, of course, 'strength'. Whatever.... how ya doin' anyway? Long time, no whap upside the head. LOL. mac

Just to add: if you want to avoid having a huge shadow map size for sharp shadows, adjust the zoom on the appropriate shadowcam so that it "sees" only the part of the scene where there will actually be shadows. This improves the efficiency of the shadow rendering process, so you get sharper shadows without having to go to 4096 x 4096 shadow maps (most of the time).