On the left: shadowmapped shadows.
On the right: raytraced shadows.

Well, I can't seem to make them work with SP1b. I'll fool with this more latter.
Lurking in the Shadows...

It looks to me like your mirror object is not casting a solid shadow so the ground plane shows up. But the wall behind the mirror does show a full shadow. So maybe some tweaking on the ground plane? or check your lighting to make sure you dont' have a light slighly behind the mirror object that is shining down. Oh, wait, I see the problem. The right side of your mirror cube (right to the mirror not your right) is reflective so its reflecting the ground plane. Instead of a cube mirror, make a 2d face mirror.

as fate would have it I'm attempting an image where the stage is set in a similar way. currently it is still rendering. but once it's done. I'll check

RayTraced shadows aren't showing on mine either. In production or draft settings. I'm only using the reflection node in the alternate diffuse with a quality of .2 and softness of 0. Depth shadows work just fine. I'm running patch "a" with the pref updates on a: P4 1.9 Ghz 756 MB SDRam GForce 2 MX

OK, I guess that makes it a real bug. (I thought I was loosin' t for a while there) I'll mail CL with this thread. Maybe SP2 will fix this.
Just lookin' for some shade.

The shadows are showing on mine, but they're screwing up the actual reflections - giving them jagged edges. I posted about this a few threads down.

oh, and I have the version A patch I think. I downloaded the patch split into two parts.

lalverson, Were thaose Depth Mapped shadows? I just got a message back from CL support. They were able to duplicate it and it's on the to fix list. Volfin, I've noticed that raytrace light will not penetrate a prop even if it's "Cast Shadows" is turned off. That may explain the missing highlight. Sitll probably not right. You may want to let CL know and see what they say.

think the raytraycing got much better and faster,but it has not the quality bryce raytraycer has. maybe i do some comparing images with one scene rendered in p5 with ff and another with the same setup in bryce. in bryce lights can penetrade glas and its focussed as if you have a lens.

aaarghhh... I NEVER get ANY nice reflections... I just can't figure out the lights and the best settings/materials for a mirror to reflect more than something like a "ghost" of the character in front of the mirror. Is there a tutorial how to make reflections in P5?

@ lalverson and crescent: i think that those stripes in the mirror come from the light that stands almost on the same plane as reflecting object (plane) AND the reflective object is set to cast shadows. i guess that moving the light a bit from the reflective plane (so the shadows aren't parallel to it) might help.

ARCHITECT, Attach the reflection node to the Alternte Diffuse. Set all the colors to black except for the Alt Diffuse, set it white. That's all.

nerd: i alwqays attach the reflectionnodes to the reflectcolor.Why do you use the alternate diffuse?

Crescent, send that to CL maybe they can figure out what is going on there. It may be some sort of interference between the Raytraced reflection and a displacement shadow. (Has to be a displacement shadow, as it's showing in a reflection. OR What channel do you have the reflect node tied to? Try hooking it to only the alt diffuse. See if it still does it. thgeisel, You will get a more pure mirror relfection with the reflect shader node attached to the alt diffuse. The reflect channel will make it look washed out. I dunno why but that's the way it seems to work best. If you want a colored morror add a little color the the alt diffuse channel.

nerd : thanks ill give it a try

Crescent, I think the jagginess you are seeing may be related to the minimum shading rate setting on the render options menu. If you have it set above 2, you are going to get a render like that. The higher the number, the less precise the image. The manual states the opposite, and I suspect this is leading many astray.