One day I will actually know enough to be able to advise others but for the time being I'm afraid I'm the one asking. In Poser 4 I'm having trouble with obtaining shadows. Can someone please tell me whether it is only spot lights which can create shadows, or do "infinite" lights also create shadows when assigned to do so? Next if I set up even a very bright light and enable shadows, most tile floors of scenery props hardly show up at all and the shadows are barely visible. I am obviously not doing something right so I would appreciate any advice please. Next, with some lighting arrangements, the pre-rendered scene looks very bright, but the resulting render is much less so. One lighting set up had a spotlight on a character's face and the rest of the scene was quite bright, but when I rendered almost everything but the face was dark! Thanks very much for any tips. Leonardis

Make sure to turn off most of the shadows on the lights. I usually use one with shadow, the rest turned off. Step up the shadow map. A couple of well placed lights work better than a bunch of them. You can turn the light intensity down, which you should when using more than one light.

Thanks for that advice. I think I have been enabling shadows in the light dialogue box, but what you mention about not using too many lights is probably where I've been going wrong. In an effort to get more shadow I've been adding to lights instead of taking away. Wrong thinking obviously (now). When you think about it the greatest shadow caster is the sun, and there's only one of them! Cheers, Leonardis

Two different problems: -The throw of the light (what's getting illuminated) -and the view from the light's shadowcam (where shadows will be cast). Poser's shadow maps are generated from the view from each light's "shadowcam". Take a look at the view from each of these cameras to check that the items to cast shadows are actually withing the field of view and sufficiently large (more than just a few pixels). The smaller the light's "Map Size" or the wider the "End Angle" of the lights throw will result in less detailed, softer edged shadows. Go too far and they'll fuzz out completely. For crisp edged shadows, use a large Map Size and scale the Shadowmap so the objects fill more of it's field of view (hence more pixels of the resulting shadowmap). Keep in mind that changing the shadowcam settings alters the shadow map, but not the light's illumination, so, you could end up with a light illuminating from one direction, but casting shadows from another. Search "shadowcam" in here and the Poser Tech forum for even more confusing lighting fun-facts. See also the lighting posts by lesbentley, maclean and the tutes by Dr. Geep.

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