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.