Quote - I'm assuming that "shadow catching" means you can move shadows around independent of the objects which cast them.)  Is this correct? 

No.

Quote - Ah. No that's not what it means. 

Shadowcatching is on default for the Ground Plane in Poser so you can easily see how it forks. Basically it's a material that renders invisible - but on which shadows are cast. and caught :)

Right.

Quote - Weird advertising wording, though.  I didn't think moving a shadow was possible in Poser,

Why are you still on that? Did you see the words "move shadows" somewhere? In your original post you said you assumed that, and TG said that's not what it means.

Shadow catching is exactly what she said. It's a feature where you can make a wall or floor or whatever be invisible, but it becomes opaque (thus darkening what you see through it) where a shadow WOULD fall if the floor was not invisible.

This is a technique for using background images. You can "see" the floor in the image behind a figure, but it's not a real floor - it's a photo of a floor with your figure suspended in front of it. In order to make your figure appear to be standing on that floor, you turn on the "shadow catching" feature of the real 3D floor you have under your figure. As you peer "through" the real floor you can see the photographed floor. Where the shadow from the figure falls on the real floor, it darkens what you see of the photographed floor.

Poser's built-in shadow catching material feature is ok, but not perfect. It does not make the shadows the same color as in the photo. It just darkens the photo. To get real color matching, you have to do more tricks.

I have a free shadow-catching material that does allow you to perfectly match the color of the shadows that are already in the photo with the ones generated by your 3D rendering of the figure and its shadow in front of the photo.

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/shadow-catcher

My shadow catcher works in Poser 5, too so you don't have to have Poser 6 or better to get this effect.

Here's a thumbnail from one of my images that demonstrates the effect.

The tiled floor you see is a photo. The shadows of the railing in the photo are real shadows. The shadows of the figure are 3D rendered shadows superimposed on the photo. We can still see the tile even in the 3D shadow, but it's darker and slightly bluer. The reason outdoor shadows are blue is because the sun is not hitting there, but light from the sky is. So outdoor shadows look fake if they don't have the right amount of blue in them. When I did that render, I was just learning Poser and hadn't really figured out the perfect way to match the shadows, so it was trial and error.

Now you can use my shadow catcher and measure the shadow color - thus it calculates the right factors to use automatically.

If you want to see the full size renders, here are the links (warning - nudity)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1168926
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1168275

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