as you all know I"m not a newbie. I've been hesitating to ask this question, hoping I could figure it out myself. I know it's something simple. bear in mind I normally don't render anything in poser. I just set the scene up and render in carrara or vue. Well I was trying to do a simple poser render using a white background. In the preview render there are nice little shadows where the ground would be, but when I render all the shadows on the ground are gone. I quite like those shadows and would like it to render like in the preview for the particular project I have in mind. Love esther PS feel free to poke tongue out at me.

Look at your light properties to ensure that shadows are selected. Then look at your render settings to ensure that your level of detail includes shadows.

Hope that helps :)

render settings included shadows, but I didn't check the light settings. Hmmm - I thought they were default poser lights, but maybe not. I;ll check later. Thanks. Love esther

Are you using P5 or P6?  You have to turn the shadows on during rendering in the Render Options dialogue ;)
(also, don't feel dumb.  We've all done this, or something similar, in the tenure of ownership of these programs ;)  )

never mind, lol.  cross-posted. 

you might also want to check that you have a ground actually there, as from what you said "..where the ground would be.." that would indicate you don't actually have a ground, so from display(pull down) goto display guides and check that ground is checked, shadows will appear with or without a ground in preview mode,unless you specify to not show shadows, but when you render they wont be there unless you have display ground checked, you might wanna texture the ground too.

okay, thanks - I'll check all those things. I did think the ground was there, but when I turned the background white I couldn't see it anymore, but there were shadows on something where the ground would be in the preview. Unfortunately I closed the file and am running a sim on another file, so it might be awhile before i can check. Love esther

since youre running a sim ill assume its p5/p6

i dont think its possible to delete the ground, just to make it invis or invisible to the renderer.
go to your figure dropdown in the viewport, and click props > GROUND
in the properties tab of your parameter dials window, make sure both visible and visible in raytracer are checked.
when you set up your lighting, click on each of your light globes and make sure shadows are checked and switch them to ray trace shadows. if you have one of my recent products skim over the PDF readme included with them to set up your shadow min bias, render settings, etc. if not then try a generic 0.15 for your shadow min. bias.
in your render settings make sure to enable raytracing and cast shadows.

The shadows you see in your preview are just a guide, and can be turned off and on from the menu. Confusingly, they have nothing to do with what you see when you render. I have, in the past, taken a screen shot of the preview and cloned those shadows onto the final render... To summarise what the others have said, you need: Something for the shadow to be cast upon (the Poser ground, or a prop like my Basic Box which I like to think is better :) At least one light, positioned so that the figure is between it and the ground. Shadows turned on in the render options. "Casts Shadows" enabled in the light(s)' properties. You should get something then, but be prepared to tweak the intensity and softness of the shadows to get the result you want. Poser 6 has a dizzying array of options here.

No, we don't think you're stupid. Sorry, nearly forgot to say that! :D

Quote - I have, in the past, taken a screen shot of the preview and cloned those shadows onto the final render...

you too?
i often do that - and enlarge the screenshot to match my final ground-shadowless render, then use it as a guide when painting ground shadows in photoshop.
enabling raytraced shadows on the ground plane sometimes takes too long to render and can result in wierdness depending on your lighting.

Attached Link: Car Warming Party

Here's an example from my gallery - this was done in Poser 4, and I couldn't get the shadow I wanted under the car; so I combined a shadowless render with an export of the preview (after anti-aliasing, if I remember right). It may not be great art, but that would have been difficult to set up in Poser 4, and time consuming in Poser 6. Fiddle, cheat, do whatever you have to do to get the picture right! ;)

Make sure that the ground is a shadow catcher. I was having a lot of trouble with stuff not catching shadows I final imported some boxes and made them shadowcatchers and that worked for me.

Just to clarify - checking Shadow_Catch_Only means that the ground will not appear: only the shadow will be rendered. That's ideal for superimposing over a background, but may or may not be right for what you're doing.

Also check 'display', 'guides' and make sure groundplane is checked.

Hi, I think if display groundplane wasn't checked thenthe shdaows wouldn't even show up on the preview. Okay, off to load the scene back in. Love esther

okay i've put the renderer up to max qual, and display -> guides -> groundplane is on, in the properties panel ground is visible in both visible and raytraced checkboxes, in the materials the checkbox for shadowcatching is on, and the lights, i have posere 6, and display groundshadows in display menu is also checked, but still no shadows on the ground. Is it not possible to render the ground when the background is set to white? This is sooo wierd, as I'm sure i've done it before the way I want it to look, but maybe it was so long ago that i'm thinking it may possibly have been in poser 5. love esther

You could import a box prop and scale it to be the same size as the ground and make that a shadowcatcher that might work does with me.

The box idea worked, but I still don't see why the ground didn't work. Anyway, thanks everybody!!!! Love esther

> Quote - as you all know I"m not a newbie. I've been hesitating to ask this question, hoping I could figure it out myself. I know it's something simple. bear in mind I normally don't render anything in poser. I just set the scene up and render in carrara or vue. Well I was trying to do a simple poser render using a white background. In the preview render there are nice little shadows where the ground would be, but when I render all the shadows on the ground are gone. I quite like those shadows and would like it to render like in the preview for the particular project I have in mind. Love esther PS feel free to poke tongue out at me.

After following this discussion for a while I think I see what the confusion is.
What people seem to be confusing is a guide in the preview mode called Ground Shadows
that you can check on or off from the Display pull down and actual shadows cast on
the ground plane when you do a render.
The only way you are going to duplicate the Ground Shadow image  is to either export an
unrendered image and then try to fit that shadow section into your scene in postwork or to
put a light directly over your figure and adjust the light parameters to duplicate the Ground
Shadows image.  Because Ground Shadows is just a guide, as is the checkerboard
patern of the ground plane and all the other guide lines that you can enable or disable.
The folks that created Poser probably never anticipated that anyone would ever
want guide lines to show up in an image and so the renderer intentionally
doesn't render the guide lines, of which Ground Shadow is one of them.

If all you intend the picture for is an illustration and you aren't too concerned about
quality just take your unrendered scene and go File:Export:Image...
Then in the pop-up window give your file a name and what extension
you want it to be, ie jpeg, bmp, tiff.   The Ground Shadow will show up
in an unrendered image.

PS, you can get slightly better quality out of an exported unrendered image by
going to Render:Anti-Alias Document first.  Just don't move anything or
you will have to anti-alias it again.

Is there any shadows atol in the render?

Interesting! It was just I had a memory of doing this in the past where it rendered with the groundshadow, maybe not the preview one. But I couldnt get the shadow on the ground this time when I had a white bakcground. Love esther

Quote - Is there any shadows atol in the render?

You are never going to get the Ground Shadows in a render.
Just like you would never get Horizon Lines or Vanishing
Lines in a render.
The only way to get Ground Shadows to show up in a picture
is to export an unrendered image.

I know you never get ground shadows in a render but is this guy getting any shadows atol in his render.

No I didn't have anyh shadow until I inserted the box. Love esther

SO is everything ok now

Yep, thanks everyone!!!!! Love esther

No Problem

actually i deleted the box and it still works. It must have been that the shadows weren't actually turned on for raytracing, but I thought I tested it after you guys suggested that, but obviously I probably didn't. Love esther