Chuck the ground can be made transparent by adjusting the transparancy settings in the material properties window. It may or may not achieve what you are trying to do as the shadow will also be made transparent. There are several tricks you can try. If you can closely match the ground texture to the background texture, you may be able to crank up the intensity of the shadow to get a very strong dark black shadow, and then make the ground simi-transparent - say around 50% to 75%. This will help blend the ground texture with the background texture and soften the harsh shadow. The right lighting and getting a close match on the two textures will be the big trick here. The other thing you can do, which I do a lot, is use two square props, one for the background and the other for the ground, turning off the ground plane and cast shadows in the object properties for both props. This way you can use the same or compatable texture(s)on both, and can align the squares so that the background square covers up what you don't want showing on the ground square. You will still have to play with your lighting, and may have to turn cast shadows off for some of the lights, (object properties menu) but the two props are easier to work with, and you can parent them, and figure, to the ground prop( even though it is not visible) and rotate it to move everything. This makes adjusting your lighting easier than having move each light seperately to try out different angles. Hope this helps. Oh, one more thing. Before parenting anything in Poser 4 always save a backup copy of the file first as parenting some things together sometimes creates strange results and it is often impossible to undo. Rob