Hi, How do I render a figure against black without including the ground shadow? Thanks.

Select the ground and go into the parameter dial properties and make the  ground invisible.

Then when you render, change "current background shader" to black.

Even easier ... select the Ground and go into the material room.  Down at the bottom uncheck Shadow Catch Only.

You can also hit [Ctrl+g] to make the ground plane invisible..  You can do this via the main menu by clicking "Display / Guides" then uncheck "Ground Plane".

Shadow catch is a bit different. With shadow catch "on" the ground plane itself will not show up in the render, this for things like rendering to a background image (of a room for example) where you want the shadow of your figure to show up across the floor in the rendered image. 

Turing shadow catch "off" The shadows will still show up in the render but so will the ground plane itself which will also block out that portion of the background image.

Thanks everybody.....much appreciated.

heck, I'm trying to figure out how to make the ground plane visible...;) we are not smart..;)

Select the Ground Plane, pakled, and make sure both Visible and Visible in Raytracing are ticked in the Properties.  Then go into the Material Room and select the Ground plane again.  Untick Shadow Catch Only down at the bottom of the nodes.