I'm new to Poser, and I was wondering if you can remove shadows. I was working on a space scene and kept getting my ships shadows on the background i was using.

You can either add the background in photoshop or turn off shadows for the lights. Its a checkbox on the light properties .

You can turn off casting shadows on your lights in the parameters panel.

You can also turn off cast shadows on any prop or figure in thier properties box. Which also comes in handy if you have a back plane or wall with a light behind it.

Would like to see an option for " show shadows." would be a very handy option you could then turn that off of your item and it would not show any shadows. A few of my other rendering apps have this, not sure why it has never been put into Poser.

Guys turning off shadows in a space scene will ruin your realism. Any ship that has anything at all sticking out of it should cast a really sharp shadow ON ITSELF. Turning off shadows for the light or the ship is a bad idea.

The real problem is you've modeled your background as a prop that is lit by your light source. Stars and galaxies and such are billions of miles away and are self-lit. All you gotta do is handle the background image correctly.

You don't want this item to experience any diffuse lighting so go into the material and set Diffuse_Value = 0. You also do not want it to experience any specular lighting (it's not really a surface) so set Specular_Value = 0.

Now just plug the background image (Image_Map node) into Alternate_Diffuse. Now the object is self-lit - it will not react to any scene lighting, and it will not experience shadows.

Quote - You can also turn off cast shadows on any prop or figure in thier properties box. Which also comes in handy if you have a back plane or wall with a light behind it.

Would like to see an option for " show shadows." would be a very handy option you could then turn that off of your item and it would not show any shadows. A few of my other rendering apps have this, not sure why it has never been put into Poser.

by bagginsbill

"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."

It was good enough for me on a simple scene I was working on.

EDIT: O_o  hahaha we pretty much posted at the same time (taking time differences into account), thanks again for said tip btw.

I missed the background part.I was thinking plain. OH well. I layer everything anyways. LOL. I would still like to see a "show shadows "option

She's new to Poser, first it needs to be determined whether she means rendered shadows, or Ground Shadows.  Ground Shadows are turned off by unclicking them in the display menu in the top Tool Bar. 

For rendered shadow on the background, First paste you background onto a background Plane, and don't use an imported background.  In the materials room, plug the background image in to the ambient slot on the planes materials panel, and set color to white, and set value to 1.  In the Diffuse slot, set color to black, and set value to 1.  On render, you'll see a background without any cast shadow on it.
DPH

Quote - Guys turning off shadows in a space scene will ruin your realism. Any ship that has anything at all sticking out of it should cast a really sharp shadow ON ITSELF. Turning off shadows for the light or the ship is a bad idea.

The real problem is you've modeled your background as a prop that is lit by your light source. Stars and galaxies and such are billions of miles away and are self-lit. All you gotta do is handle the background image correctly.

You don't want this item to experience any diffuse lighting so go into the material and set Diffuse_Value = 0. You also do not want it to experience any specular lighting (it's not really a surface) so set Specular_Value = 0.

Now just plug the background image (Image_Map node) into Alternate_Diffuse. Now the object is self-lit - it will not react to any scene lighting, and it will not experience shadows.

Using the envsphere may be a good idea i think !

Thank you all. Dphoadley got it right. But I can still use the other suggestions. Oh, I'm a he, not a she.

The arithmetic behind what DPH suggested results in the same as what I suggested. However, the difference is in how many steps.

DPH said to set Diffuse_Color = BLACK and Diffuse_Value = 1. That's 0 times 1 which is 0.

I said to set Diffuse_Value = 0. Thats color * 0 which is 0.

See the difference? The result is zero either way, but setting the value is quicker than setting the color. I've seen people suggest this many times and I don't get why you go the long way around. The diffuse effect is the product (multiplication) of color and value. If either is 0, then result is 0.

When DPH said to set color to black and value to 1, that was redundant. Set color to black if you want, and at that point the value is totally irrelevent. There is no need to set it to 1 or any other value. Similarly, if you set the value to 0, there is no need to set the color to anything in particular.

Practically every time I tell somebody how to stop lighting effects on a background, somebody chimes in with setting the color to black and setting the value to some number other than 0, even though I just said how to do it using the number 0 alone and color doesn't matter.

Same thing with the next part. I said connect the image to Alternate_Diffuse. One step.

DPH said connect it to Ambient_Color, set that color to white, and set the Ambient_Value to 1. That's three steps that accomplish exactly the same thing.

DPH isn't the only one. Every time I say connect to the Alternate_Diffuse (one mouse drag), somebody chimes in with connect to the ambient, set the color, set the value (seven mouse clicks, plus some typing).

Why? Why do you people chime in with longer harder ways to do things?

Sigh.

Maybe because people like alternatives. You shouldn't take it so personally.

What gave you the idea I took it personally? I have answered this question many many times. Often, someone else posts after I have with a more difficult version of the same solution. How is the same solution an alternative, if it cannot be measurably differentiated in any way, except that it is more work to achieve the same results?

In case you don't know it, I'm an engineer. Alternatives that don't make sense are like an itch to me. I have to scratch. It's not because I took it personally. It's because I can't grasp why people wish to remain unclear on simple concepts like multiplication by zero (or black), and why they take the time to do things the longer way, and even moreso, why they take the time to type out an explanation to someone that there is a longer way that doesn't do anything at all differently in terms of the effects.

Ahh Grasshopper. Why do it the easy way when the hard way works.

Grasshopper - LOL. I used to love that show.

Baggins, you need to make you eyes that white milky look...now that would be funny! :lol: