I was wondering if its possible to make objects cast shadows on everything but the ground? I'm rendering a set of images and it'd take some time to postwork everything.

Thanks.

Uncheck  Display->Guides->Ground Plane

Just a passing thought... If you don't want the Ground prop to catch appropriate shadows from your scene lighting and objects, what use can it be in your scenes? Why not make it invisible?

(edit) x-post - I was away looking at something else!

Well the thing is because of my light setup, the shadow cast on the ground, wich is not just the ground plane, ends up far too long and streched, I do want shadow to be cast on other figures on the scene though.

I could render the figures, hide them, then render the ground and turn them back up , but there are many figures on the scene, some of them with certain parts hidden, so doing this process over and over for every image would be very time consuming.

Are you using multiple lights in your scene and are they all casting shadows?  I need some clarification to address your problem accurately.

Wait a sec. You asked how to "make objects cast shadows on everything but the ground". Now we learn that this is "not just the ground plane". Your original phrasing implied that we were dealing with the typical shadow-catching ground plane.

So, you have a prop that you do not want to see shadows on? This has nothing to do with the "Poser Ground" plane, right?

I'd have to say I'm curious why your lights should not cast long shadows, if you've placed the lights low. Is this an outdoor scene, i.e. is the low light the sun? The sun casts long shadows in real life.

Or is it indoor, or night with local lights? With local lights, long shadows fade due to blurring - the real light source is not a point. If that's the case you should be using raytraced shadows and blurring, and they will fade with distance as in real life.

Also, are we really talking about the shadow making too much contrast? Most Poser users are not doing gamma correction, so shadows look over contrasty. The solution is not to get rid of the shadow in that case, but to make it generate the proper brightness as a photo of a real shadow would do. Do you have Poser Pro? Have you enabled gamma correction?

Or is realism not relevent, and you just want the ground to not react to light and shadow at all? If that's the case, it would help if you showed us what you're working with. I'm wondering if the prop in question is shaded simply, basically just image mapped? Or is it a procedural shader with some complexity? Does it need to react to light at all?

Sorry for so many questions, but there are solutions (different ones) depending on your answers. I know how to make a shader for a prop that does not react to light at all. I know how to make a shader seem to react to light, while having no lights in the scene whatsoever. I know how to make the shader react to lights and shadows, but to decrease it's response to the shadow alone. I know how to gamma correct in any version of Poser, not just Poser Pro. I could explain any of these once we know that's how you want to go. They all require multiple postings to explain. I'm not going to write them all here, as I've already written all of these things elsewhere in this forum.

Yeah, sorry for my poorly written question.

Quote -
So, you have a prop that you do not want to see shadows on? This has nothing to do with the "Poser Ground" plane, right?

Exactly, its a scene with 2 characters and some props inside a small room. They are cartoon characters from Daz3D, no shaders or advanced materials, just basic textures.  I'm using AO and Raytraced shadows just to bring more detail to the models and its only one light casting it, but like I said, it casts to the floor too and I dont want that for the particular effect I'm trying to get. I want it to react to light, but not shadow.

Thanks for the interest

As I understand, you want no ground shadow.  Period.  I would try switching off shadows on that main light and use spot lights on your characters possibly from the same angle to preserve model details.

Ok let's start simple and see if that's good enough.

On the "floor", disconnect the color map from Diffuse_Color. Connect it to Alternate_Diffuse. Set Diffuse_Value = 0 and Specular_Value = 0.

Your floor is now self lit. Lights and shadows will have no effect on it.

To make it darker, adjust the color in the Alternate_Diffuse channel to a shade of gray.

That sounds great, unfortunately for me, I'm out of town for the rest of the week, I'll have to wait until monday when I get back and try this :huh:

But it sounds like its excatly what I need. Thanks a lot, I'll report back once I try it.