I'm trying to duplicate the effect of light showing through waves to an underwater scene in Poser 4. I'm made some progress by taking a plane, applying a wave texture and a wave transpanceny to it, placing it over the scene and rendering it. The problem come up in the shadows, which are black! The plane is transparent green and should cast blue-green shadows--NOT black. The ripple-hilights are correct, but even at 100% transparency--BLACK shadows! Is this correctable somehow? Is there some way to alter the density of shadows in a render somehow? I've only been using using Poser 4 for a month and this might be a noob question. Any help would be appreciated!

RDNA has a freebe that does that, its called caustics. They have it in either the poser 5 freebees or maybe the lights section,I think there were about a dozen variations in the set.

rdna have a set of aquatic free lights in the lights section....awesome too

Thankies! I'll check them out and see if they work in Poser 4.

Shadows them selves do not have colour (in the real world, or in Poser), they are a diminuation or absence of light. The colour you see in a shadowed area is the result of of the objects colour and the colour of the light falling on the object, and will show to the extent that the object is not in total shadow. In Poser each light has a dial named 'Shadow', setting this dial to a lower value will decrease the intensity (darkness) of the shadow cast by that light. Shadow maps in Poser 4 do not seem to give gradated shadows. In a grey scale transmap it seems that areas with a luminescence value (in the color pallet) of 121 or less are transparent to light in respect to shadows, and that areas with a luminescence value 122 or higher are opaque in respect to shadows.

lesbentley you are right! and wise words too! sometimes users forget about the reality. JOELGLAINE I know you can't do this in Poser4, but you can in Poser5 or Poser6, using Image, plug the Image maps you talking about into any light in Poser5-6 and you will get the nice effect you wish. It is called the ::Gel:: light effect nothing to do with IBL .. in this case it will works like projector, amazing for wave simulations and under water scenes. Cath

Correction. In Post #5: "Shadow maps in Poser 4..." Should have read: "Transparency maps in Poser 4 do not seem to give gradated shadows".