I am working on a project that will require some creative shadows.  I can “build” a an actual object to produce the shadows that I need, but since they will not be seen in the actual renders and would add polygons to an already complex scene, I would like to try creating my own gels to get the lighting effects I need.  Daz has some really nice looking gel packages, but I need something a little more custom.  Can anybody tell me how to do this or point me in the direction of a good tutorial?

Thanks in advance!

You can use a textured plane in front of the light - paint the texture as you want the shadow to appear, then invert it and apply that to the Opacity Strength in the Surface pane (the colour of the opacity map is the colour that's blocked, so the light that ends up on the ground will be the opposite of the colour of the map - as, with a plain map, white blocks everything and black lets everything through)

Thanks for the reply.  I also found a set of gels that I had purchased from DAZ.  I loaded them in and through a little trial and error and reverse engineering, I think I can create my own gel lights directly using photoshop.  I'm going to try both and see which one works better.  If it works out, I'll try and post something in the gallery.