thanks bagginsbill, i really appreciate your help and insight.

to tell the truth, i heard the term "shadow catch" for the first time about 2 weeks ago. of the poser subjects i know of, i understand nearly nothing and i am frequently learning of new subjects about poser that i have never heard of before. what a challenge.

i have seen some of the posts you have written and they are very impressive. i intend to go through them when i get to the point that i can understand them. for the present, i am trying to get my overall project in basic working order. it involves many things of which poser is an important part.

i recently started peeking into the material room to see what was there. i have tried to get an idea about shaders and it seems vast. i didn't know the ground was in the material room and sure enough, it was set to shadow catch only. i unchecked it and my shadows are consistent. however, i no longer have transparent backgrounds but i think you said that can be dealt with.

at this point, it doesn't have to be perfect, because i can always re-render the scene library which was what i was doing to improve the shadows. i don't know how to use python to do shader stuff yet but i can always do a global change to the pz3 files if nothing else.

my major goal right now is to add more content. here are examples of what the images in the collage (online) library are like at present in terms of transparency:

www.bestlogic.com/collage/pics/actors-phoebe--phoebe-02-wait_s=1_v=n_m=0_r010.png
www.bestlogic.com/collage/pics/machines-vehicles_fullsize--36AM_s=1_v=0_m=n_r025.png

i am looking forward to hearing what is possible next with shadows.