I agree with all the above cool ideas if poser internal rendering is really your only option. I don't do a lot of P5-only assembly work or rendering. (And admittedly, my machines have enough firepower this is rarely a problem on my home jobs.) In Renderman (and some MAX and LW renderers) there's a "receive cast shads only" shader you can apply to the whole scene for one specific pass, and it just outputs an all black frame with a white alpha where shadows fall. You then use this alpha to darken through as an effects layer on your cast-shadowless (fast rendering) background and beauty passes -- only self-shadows are needed. It's FAST, because it doesn't load a bunch of textures, just one shader for all over every object. (Maybe there's a P5 equivalent I'm not aware of?) Professional FX houses do a LOT of multipass rendering with a final compositing step to mass-assemble and tweak trick-shadow, crowded 3D scenes. I have Combustion and AfterEffects, which both have "two-and-a-half-D" tricks and cheats that help with cross-layer shadow making -- at least on shadows that are not cast across critical areas of subject interest. (When two main objects inteact that closely, they should probably be in the same render pass anyway.) Those tricks generally involve taking a copy of the alpha outline of a character and either doing actual quickie 3D z-offset one-lights on it, or else 2D "squishing" or "squeezing" it according to the direction of light source in the scene, and then using the result to darken any layers behind the object. And yes, you CAN do this same thing manually by eye with photoshop or PSP and their various shape distortion tools (I have done so on small jobs) but the trick-lighting in the upscale composite programs is comparatively pretty spiffy and quick, esp. for many-frame anims. The absolutely critical thing always is do these two objects cast shadows on each other? If not, and render power is limited, they should always be in a seperate pass. (Note in an animation, which object is or is not interacting with others often CHANGES, and your passes sometimes have to be frame range specific!) Does this really save time if you have to do many multiple passes? YES. Each part summed is is still almost always less than the whole shebang at once. Not only that, multiple passes let you do color (or blur, or other) tweaks to seperate elements in your composite easily without affecting others. If it's all one piece, your changes often help one thing while hurting another, and you have to figure nasty ways to split them up and treat them seperately after the fact. Seperate multiple passes are a GOOD thing. Sometimes this even means passes with some lights on and off, to be composite-mixed-and/or-tinted, or even rendering your specular highlight passes seperate from your diffuse light passes to be treated differently. (Note these things are less critical in a still frame whech can be rather easily paint-tweaked, but become critical in animation sequences of hundreds of frames.) For masses of ground shadows when the light source is high above, Rather than actually render a ground shadow, I almost always just take a layer copy of the alpha shape outline of the characters, squish it vertically flat (to the degree that seems like a reasonable shadow "length" for the scene and light angle) and then maybe offset it or blur/distort it a little. I then use it to darken the ground-only render layer beneath them in the comp, maybe adding some color tint based on the ground surface. Like it's already been said, There's always more than one way to UV skin a Poser Cat. - - -