How can I have an object (Text in my case) cast a shadow, yet be invisible? The most obvious settings in the Properties of "[ ] Visible and [X] Casts Shadows" does not work as even though Casts Shadows is checked, visible seems to override it. So... any creative ideas? Thanks, Jim Gale

I don't know that this is possible. About the best thing I can think of off the top of my head is to put a gel in the light which would cast the shadow of the shape you're after. -Kix

There are two ways to do it. First shade your object so that color = 0, transparency = 100, and no light interactions when fully transparent is checked. Next you have two options with the lights, either turn off Lighting through transparency on the renderer or if you need that, soft shadows don't work with transparency so set your light to soft shadows instead of ray traced. Good Luck, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Thanks Eric. That should have been an obvious one. -Kix

another solution that i've heard of, but never tried, is to make a shadow object. this just means that you determine how your shadow would look and make it in geometry. you could probably convert your text to a vertex object and then smoosh it flat in the modeling room. then make the shader a dark color. this technique is used in video games so that the makers can render without calculating shadows. unfortunately, this probably won't work too well if the surface was anything other than a flat plane. good luck with your problem. -scott