thank you guys! @nruddock yep, that thread covers exactly the same problem. Q:"Depth map shadows behave properly." true, but they ignore trans-maps completely and make shadows of the mesh, not of the trans-map. sigh! here again: render a couple of times and postwork. the dog's chasing the own tail! @templargfx for this shadow the radius was set to 2, and it's quite messy around the shoulders, like stainded. awful! in the end i rendered it with 0,0 and blurred it in pshop. not exactly good, but still better than this;) Q:"as to why it happens, I think it has to do with the way firefly traces light. like most ray tracers it starts at the pixel on the image and traces the light back to the object and then from there to the light source. the problem is that it does this in "steps"..." do you mean the raytrace bounces? i'm curious about your test results;) @pjz oh no! i'm no friend of this second skin thing! just a blender node is too 'flat', and displacement looks ridiculous, kinda good enough for freebie thumbnails. in the end, the only thing that fits skintight to v3 is a second v3 with 0,0something displacement. true, for this image - upper ends covered, white background - a blender should do, but it would have taken me more clicks to set the nodes;) as for the pubic hair...that 'onboard' stuff is as awful as the rent and as pita as 'onboard' eyebrows. and the pubic hair material zone of v3, miss 'kinkypimpinella-has-a-bunny-on-her-thingie'? no thanks! A.