Got some major shadow problems with this scene.

One IBL light, at 5% intensity, AO on at strength 1
One specluar only infinite
One infinite light, white, intensity 75%, AO on at strength 1, raytraced shadows, shadow blur 5.0
Global AO settings: RayBias 0.1, max distance 20, samples 7
Units: centimeters.

Ground object: RDNA Macrocosm + the ground planes of LBs CreepyTrees II
Ground shader: color map from Transpond Megalith, anti-gamma corrected, with a noise+cellular for displacement. Displacement is "centered"; about half of the displacement is inwards, half outwards. Global coordinates set to ON.
The same shader is applied to the ground planes of the CreepyTree objects.
I applied material based AO, samples 5, raybias 0.1, distance 20, strergth 50 (!) to the ground shaders.

Render settings: Raytrace 2 bounces, shadows on, irradiance caching 0, minimum displacement bounds 5.0, smooth polygons and displacement maps enabled.

As you can see in the attached image, the light based AO works fine on the figures, as do the shadows.
But for some weird reason I don't get any shadow on the ground,  I've tried depth mapped shadows, different blur radius, other ground shaders, nothing helps.

Help!

A larger version of the image (1600x1200) can be found here

It's very dark and it doesn't appear as if you can actually see much of the ground.  But, with the figure on the far right, it appears to me that there is indeed a ground shadow.  It's just very broken up because of the groundplane effects.  But, it is there, to me.  Of course, that may just be my eyes playing tricks on me because I have a lot of contrast between that pic and the white background border of my screen.  I'll open it up in a image editor and check it at full screen so my eyes don't "wash out" the details due to a bright border around such a dark picture.

I opened it up in Photoshop and ran through the gamut of filters trying to find shadows.  I couldn't find any groundshadows easily identifiable as such.  What I thought was a groundshadow was just a terrain feature.

To be honest, how would you know if you had groundshadows?  The image is too dark and too dimly lit to justify a strong groundshadow.  Dark and dim isn't always a bad thing but, with all the detail in this image, the eye is really "unfocused" and is going to end up trying harder to figure out what is happening than it is in picking up subtle details.  If there was a groundshadow, it would simply be "dark+1" on what is already "dark."  If you tried to make the shadows stand out more, they'd be way too strong for the lighting and wouldn't look right.

If you don't want to add in a white light, what about adding in a green fill light and then a blueish highlight (to simulate strong moonlight breaking through the overgrowth) to catch the edges of the objects in the scene?  Then, with that highlight there and a tiny bit of forest-canopy/atmosphere "green" light filtering down, you could justifty to the "eye" some stronger shadows on the ground.  Otherwise, I think any additional "darkness" is going to go completely unnoticed.

Nice action and great scene construction btw.  That forest/swamp area is outstanding!  Well done there.

Edit - Took another look.  I was primarily staring at the ground when examining the pic in photoshop so didn't really take into account the sky backdrop.  Scratch the "green" light suggestion and just go with a some blue highlight lighting to simulate moon/atmosphere and to catch the details so the contrast of groundshadows looks appropriate to the eye.  Just my two-bits, worth exactly what you paid for it. :)

If your background sky condition is overcast and dark, the lighting would be more homogenious and even throughout your scene.  The very low IBL bothers me a bit.  I would think it should be higher to infuse more light into the shadows.  Morkonan is correct, the scene is too dark to make an accurate assessment.  Nice scene though.

I would make everything invisible in hierachy editor.. Then switch on groundplane and one critter..  better yet,,, one primitive and save the ground texture to materialroom. Then just disconnect the texture..

Now you have a "box" over your groundplane...no textures..I'n sure you got it from here. This should tell you what is or is not happenning..

From there,, switch to a spot and use "point at"  function. Then switch to shadow cam and tune the light while looking through the cam. Maybe infinite will work after all..Just switch off "point" before you switch back or the light will travel...

Shadowpasses tests should be fast and furious till you solve the problem

..reconnect textures,, toggle "universe" in hierachy,, away you go

Quote - I would make everything invisible in hierachy editor.. Then switch on groundplane and one critter..  better yet,,, one primitive and save the ground texture to materialroom. Then just disconnect the texture..

Now you have a "box" over your groundplane...no textures..I'n sure you got it from here. This should tell you what is or is not happenning..

From there,, switch to a spot and use "point at"  function. Then switch to shadow cam and tune the light while looking through the cam. Maybe infinite will work after all..Just switch off "point" before you switch back or the light will travel...

Shadowpasses tests should be fast and furious till you solve the problem

..reconnect textures,, toggle "universe" in hierachy,, away you go

Great suggestions.  Filing them away myself for future use! :)

that image kicks
maybe you should apply baggins gamma correction to brighten

Good ideas, richardson.
I suspect the trouble is somewhere in the ground shader. I anti-gamma'ed all color maps, maybe I shouldn't do that on the ground color map - and I may have to reduce or eliminate the anti-gamma on the foremost creature skin.

The anti-gamma works well on the skin shaders of the human figures, I'd say. and the water turned out really well.

Dark and dim is the mood I'm trying for, so that's okay.

Post if you solve this,,ok?

Anti-gamma was the problem indeed. I made a simple test scene with just the sky dome and the tree. There was a definite ground shadow when I didn't anti-gamma the color map, and the shadow almost completely disappeared after applying anti-gamma.

Doing a re-render now with some extra goodies thrown in - a campfire and volumetrics. Will probably take a couple of hours to render (on a Q6600 with 8 GB of RAM, Poser Pro).

I assume this is Poser 7 then with no render GC?

The use of anti-gamma is to convert your textures to linear space. All well and good, but if you don't GC at the end, you'll have a very dark render.

Here's the summary:

• Traditional render - no antiGC, no GC - bright things look close to normal, darker things look nearly black
  * Anti GC only, no final GC - bright things look dark, dark things look totally black
  * Anti GC + final GC - bright things look bright, dark things look dark

Anti-gamma on the incoming materials should only be done if you're going to GC at the end. You could do it in post, or in the materials where you need/want it.

This is Poser Pro, with GC 2.2 in the render settings.
It's remarkable that the anti-GC + PPro GC works really well on the human skin, but not on the ground materials.

Oh! OK so you're letting Pro handle the anti-GC, not with a Pow node yourself, right? If you do it in a node and Pro does it in the built-in feature, it gets doubled up. You're probably not doing that, so never mind.

I'd guess it's just a really dark texture, or maybe your IBL has almost no light from above. That's a common issue - a heavily front-lit IBL will do practically nothing to a floor.

Actually, I am doing that. Anti-GC with a Pow color math node.
I checked the image map nodes, and they're set to use the render GC settings, so you're probably right about doubling up the effects.

I'm doing a rerender right now, with the anti-GC disabled (just a 1.0 in the math node that connects to the Pow) on the ground. Light balance seems to be better, but still no shadows.

The IBL should have quite some light from above (it's the HDR Pond IBL that comes with Poser Pro). But it's the infinite light from fairly high front right, that should cast the shadows. It does, clearly visible on the characters, but the ground doesn't receive shadow, and that's what's got me stumped.

I misread what you said in the beginning and I thought you had JUST a specular-only light.

I see now you have a regular infinite at 75%, correct?

OK I'm guessing here, so forgive me if I'm way off base. It's hard to tell from your small image but...

Given my experience with GC, 75% is very bright on human skin. It looks to me like you're only lit by the IBL. Do you have some kind of dome around the whole area? Is the dome casting shadows? It looks to me you don't see shadows from your sun because you don't see your sun LIGHT! The whole thing is in shadow?

Looks like you said you have AO on the infinite sun? Shouldn't do that. Directional light is accurately modeled strictly by directional shadows.

This gives me a good sense of how my lights are doing. The crevice between the ball and box shows me how AO is working. I'll render like this one light at a time, so I know what's doing what.

Sometimes I save the current lights to my library, open a blank scene, load a couple test props, and render with the lights. This let's me check that the lights are not blocked in the actual scene.

I have a bunch of these little test props, pre-assembled with a single material zone for easy changes. I made them by saving two or more primitives as an OBJ and load it back and save in my library. Very handy.

This is POND at 5% and INF at 75%. Shadows set like yours. Pro GC at 2.2.