Do you have a screenshot, so we can see where the lights are pointing?

If you deleted lights check that there are shadowcams for the point lights. There was a bug in Poser that lost the shadowcams when deleteing all lights.

You can also check by using ray traced shadows instead of shadowmaps.
 

Everything is set for raytracing, everything is set to cast shadows, and
in fact I get a shadow.

If you've got everything set for shadows, I can think of two possibilities:
either your point lights are not really inside the cave, or perhaps the
cave has its normals pointing outward, or is two-sided?

Point lights only do ray-traced shadows.

You did not mention - did you enable ray-tracing? That is necessary.

UV Dan, I think you have them.  They are very faint (look just behind the left foot, I see a shadow going towards the other foot.  Additionally, I see a faint shadow behind that foot too.  Jan

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1703403

I've done an image a while back using those caves also and I had problems with the shadows also. Getting the model on the actual cave floor and placing a light closer to the figure and pointing at it solved my problems and gave me the result wanted.

IMVHO FFRender is not the ideal module for doing this kind of indirect lighting.

Thanks for the help everyone.  My normals on the cave are pointing in.  I will have to check out everything posted here and see what it does for me and my shadows.

Does a shadow cam need a corresponding light?  Can a shadow cam follow James around and put a shadow wherever he is standing?

Dan,

You said "point lights". There are no shadow cams for point lights. They only do ray-traced shadows. You didn't answer my question. I asked you if you enabled ray tracing. You won't get any ray-traced shadows without ray-tracing and you won't get any shadows on point lights without ray-traced shadows.

And also you do not need to "point" a point light at anybody. A point light will shine in all directions. It always makes a shadow in every direction.

**
Thanks, I will check on that ray tracing.
**

Here is the texture map.

Try lowering the value of Shadow Min Bias of your light to about 0.2 and see how you go.
And 7 ray trace bounces is way too many. For a scene like this, 2 is plenty.
Actually, for a scene where you're not tracing reflection or refraction, it won't make any difference.

Thanks RubiconDigital.  I will do that.

Bugger. That is all a bit strange. I can only suggest going the other way with Shadow Min Bias and seeing what happens. Very odd.

Edit: There you go, my suggestion worked even before I posted it :)

You got shadows now, but you figure is still floating in the air :-) 

The black splotches are a common artifact of Poser ray-tracing. They show up with reflections, refractions, ambient occlusion, and ray-traced shadows. In every case, increasing ray bias (not decreasing as first suggested) makes them go away.

The trade-off is that if you increase the ray bias a lot, ray-tracing will ignore certain things that you don't want it to ignore.

I don't know the actual mathematical reason this happens. There's nothing in the manual about the details of Poser's ray-tracing algorithms.  I just know that there is a fundamental flaw in Poser's ray-tracing that requires a ray bias to avoid it. A ray bias tells the renderer to ignore certain geometry for purposes of seeing what the ray is intersecting. It has something to do with concave surfaces creating spurious self-shadowing. It is particularly visible when you have surfaces that are concave (pardon the pun) due to displacement. It happens somewhat less when the actual geometry is concave, but it still happens.

**Thanks all.  I really appreciate the help.
aeilkema my figure is running.  You are seeing him in mid stride.  He is just there to establish the scale of the cave and textures anyway.
**

I've never had to set the bias anywhere near 4, but there you go, at least it's sorted.
You would think, wouldn't you, that after all these years the software would be sorted and bugs like this would have been squashed.

I really like the last picture.  Even if the splotches are artifacts, they look
realistic on cave walls.  Often real caves are covered with white bat guano,
"mummified" bat carcasses, and limestone deposits.

an easy solution for the artifact issue is to not have the cave cast shadows.  and i've had items i had to turn off shadows for because i won't go above a certain shadow bias.  but it looks like you don't really need light from outside the cave, right?  i mean,  if you were doing a silhouette at the entrance of a cave image, then you'd need it to cast shadows so the cave could be darker. but i can't see an opening here.

oh, and you'll lose shadows from cave features.  forgot about that.  you might not want that.

Thanks RubiconDigital and ockham.

Thanks cobaltdream.  Yes all the outside lights are off now.  So I have to choose between my figure casting shadows on the cave, or the cave casting shadows on itself?   We will see what happens as I develop the texture.

I am trying to figure out how to make this a prop so my camera access panels will show up and  then I can try and figure out how to open them up to make the inside visible from the outside.  Having to keep the camera in the cave limits the shots available somewhat.
**

*Often real caves are covered with white bat guano,
"mummified" bat carcasses, and limestone deposits.

*OCKHAM - R you  a SPELUNKER???

;-)

Quote - **Ok I have taken the cave into Deep Paint 3D and painted out the floor seam.  Then I dipped it into UV Mapper Pro and welded the crack in the ceiling.  Now I am back on the lighting.  Here the min shadow bias is cranked to ten on each of two lights inside the main cavern area.

I am trying to figure out how to make this a prop so my camera access panels will show up and  then I can try and figure out how to open them up to make the inside visible from the outside.  Having to keep the camera in the cave limits the shots available somewhat.
**

I THINK you can make this see-through by making sure you're not using double walls. If you've got a single.sided model with the normals facing inwards, you ought to be able to look into it from the outside And therefore place a camera on the outside and still have it render what's in the cave.

I like that cave a lot btw. Wonderfully creepy!

Thanks TrekkieGrrrl.   The facets face inwards.  I am assuming that the normals also do.  I will have to run it into UVMP and check now.

When you look at the back of a polygon in preview it is invisible, but I don't think it is invisible in render. Many times I've accidentally put my camera outside a room, thought I was in it, and when I rendered all I get is the wall and can't see inside.

If you are not doing ray-tracing reflections from inside the cave, there is a workaround. Use the render option to remove backfacing polygons. This is not the same as seeing through a polygon. For the purpose of that render it is completely removed. Very handy.

But if you happen to be using a shiny reflective surface in the cave, the polygons facing away from the camera (and towards the interior objecs) will be missing.

Thanks that is good to know.