Hi James, The problem is that Carrara, Soft Shadows and Transparency don't get along. If you disable the Soft Shadows (use Raytraced), the color of the object will color the shadow too. Here's a work-around for your situation though. It's not perfect for all circumstances but works great here: Leave your scene as it is. Change the light to Raytraced shadows. Select the ground plane and go to the Effects portion of the object tray. Enable blur and adjust to your liking. (On my system, if I adjust the blur and close the window before the tiny rendering in the blur window completly draws I crash. However, if it draws there are no problems.) Hope that this helps! Mark