Ok, so I set an umbrella to about 50% transparency, with a light directly overhead, figuring it would (most likely) shine a little bit of light through the transparent material. However, it doesn't work out that way. I get a major shadow on the figures head/face. Any ideas on how to go about this?

Set the umbrella to not cast shadows would be my guess but I haven't used P4 since I got P5 and then P6 and now P7.

I don't think there's any way to have 'middling' shadows in P4. In later versions, with raytraced rendering, you can get a shadow that varies with the transparency.

Otherwise, as Victoria said, turning off Cast Shadows on
the Properties panel of the umbrella is the only option.

(Except for postwork, of course....)

Great! Don't you just love it when you are on a budget...GRRRRR!! LOL

If setting the umbrella to not cast shadows doesn't work.

You could always try and use a light to light the underside of the umbrella to the desired shade as well.

Of course leave it to me too always find the hard way to do things.

LOL

 

 

Attached Link: http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/

Using PoseRay you can reder the scene with POV-Ray (www.povray.org). POV-Ray is a free high-quality raytracer. In PoseRay you can chage the transparency of the umbrella material and the light will shine through when you render the scene in POV-Ray.

Check PoseRay's manual for a simple tutorial.

good luck,

FlyerX

Yeah, Darth, that's what I had in mind of doing.
Flyersx, thank's for introducing me to yet another program I have to learn...
:unsure:  :scared:

I would try setting the Shadow value of the light to .5 instead of 1, that will make the shadow lighter.  I've attached a picture to show what I mean. The left side is rendered with the shadow value @ 1.0, the right side rendered with the shadow value @ 0.5. It was rendered in Pro-Pack, so no ray-tracing. Click the pic to see it bigger.