Was the shadow making the cube show up AS a cube? Thgat is, did it have an edge to it, or were the shadows being projected onto the gas in an undefined way? I had a similar problem yesterday, and I couldn't figure out what to do about it either. Maybe you could take a copy of the object that you want to have shadowed and flatten it and stretch it according to the angle of the light, and place IT underneath the cube, and give it a dark and fuzzy material to kind of simulate a shadow? And then figure out a way to light the original object so it's consistent with the shadows, but isn't actually casting a shadow down. I don't know if any of that would work or look real enough, but it's worth a shot. I couldn't find a way around my problem, and this just occurred to me. IO wish I didn't have to go to work now! Cheers, Mike