Hi all,

I am new to digital art, but i love it!  I have recently started trying to use Blender 3d... Hehe! This is going to take awhile to learn :blink: I am having trouble getting glass objects to refract light, rather than just cast a shadow... I have followed several tutorials on making glass, and all works except for the fact that the glass object casts those silly solid shadows :unsure: It is as if no light passes through the object.... HELP!!!

Hello and welcome :)

Right now the best Blender's internal can do is called transparent shadows. In the shaders tab of the object RECIEVING the shadow, click the TraSh button. Now the shadows it recieves  will be affected by the casting object's Alpha value. There is somthing called transmissivity coming in the next release that has somthing to do with light passing through objects.

That all... I feel stupid!!  :thumbupboth:  Thanks mate!!!

if you want to use refractions and caustics or any material setting involving complex rendering modes, i would recoment yafray as it is amazingly simple to use.  however, there are amazingly few tutorials for learning how to use caustics and the few that there are are outdated confusing.  i am trying to find the time this summer to write some basic tutorials on caustics and liquids based on what knowledge i have gathered or figured out during the year.  caustics however was the most elusive of all rendering methods