This has never happened before... My lights aren't casting ground shadows in one scene. I've set the lights (only two of them) to cast shadow and I've set the shadow color black. Even in render the shadow doesn't show. What conditions can cause this?

In the object Properties its posible to turn off shadows cast by that particular object. Check the properties of your objects to see if this is the case with them.

Thanks Phil, but that's not it! I just checked again.

This happened to me once. First problem was that I didn't have the ground plane guide on. Second thing was that my figure wasn't on the floor, it just looked like it was because of the camera angle. Could it be one of those things? Are you certain your figure is on the floor?

It's not those things. Funny thing is it happens ONLY WITH THIS SCENE, which I created. There's no shadow with ground plain displayed, whether using ground default texture or a custom texture. Something's wrong and I can't figure it.

Not sure what all you checked other than what was mentioned here, so I'll do this by the numbers and see if we can't figure this out. First off, what do you mean you have set the shadow color to black? If you have set the color for the light to black, than that is probably your problem. Try setting the color to white and see what happens. If that doesn't do it, than check your render setting and make sure that render with shadows is check. If it is, check your dial setting on the lights and make sure the shadow dial is not set to 0 but is set to 1 or atleast a higher setting than zero. Also see what the map size is. The default is 256 but you will probably want to change this to around 1024 or higher. If all these are set right. Try this. Since you are only using two lights, add two more lights to the scene. Using the copy and paste command in the edit drop down, copy the setting for the two lights you have to the two new lights. Go to properties, and turn off the 2 old lights, and render the picture. I have had lights get corrupted on me before and not render properly and this always has fixed the problem. So give it a try. Hopefully one of these will fix the problem. Rob

Thanks, I'll give all this a try. (By shadow color I meant the button on the right that sets a shadow's color from white to black.)

Okay. The button you mention is for the ground shadow. It will only show up on the ground plane and is there to help position the figure on the ground. I never use it. It is not a proper shadow and will not show up when you render the picture. Likewise, the shadows from the lights are invisible and will not show up proper until you render the pic making them a bit diffult to work with at time. I normally work with the scene set to texture shading but will sometimes set the scene to smooth shading when working with lights as it helps show a little better how (the angle)the light is hitting the figure. Best of luck. Rob

But the odd thing is that, in this scene, there's no "shadow" EITHER on the ground plane (to help positioning) OR after rendering.

Wow this is strange. Have you tried saving the lights to the library as presets. Then open up a new file and change the lighting to the presets you just saved and render the pic. Do you get shadows now? If so, try loading the pic you are having problems with. Select another lighting preset from the library and change the lighting to it. Render the pic. Do you get shadows with this light set? If so, load the first lighting preset you saved (the original one for the image). Render again. Did that fix anything? Rob

Problem solved. This was a very good suggestion and enabled me to do some controlled experiments. At first, no shadows in the new scene. But clearing the old scene showed with greater clarity where and what the lights were. A bright overhead infinite light was canceling out the four more distant spots, so even close up and with 1.00 shadow set they were all too feeble to cast a shadow, even with the other spots switched off. Moreover, switching off the infinite light hadn't helped previously because the four spots canceled each other! This was a great way to learn about lights. Thanks to all for the help.

Glad you were able to solve the problem. Also, very kind of you to post your solution. It will no doubt help someone down the road experiencing the same kind of thing. Rob