Here's a little "micro-tutorial!" A useful but often overlooked setting in Poser is lights' Shadow Min Bias (in the Properties tab). Adjusting this setting can make the difference between great images and those that look just a little "wrong." The inner workings of this setting are a bit mysterious. Basically, objects will not cast shadows on other objects that are super close to them, and the Shadow Min Bias number controls how far away an object needs to be before it will receive a shadow. Defies reality? Yes, but when the left side of a single polygon casts shadows on the right side of the same polygon, it is probably not what you want. With a Shadow Min Bias setting too low, objects will cast shadows on themselves, creating a mess. Too high, and there will be no shadow where one obviously belongs, creating halos or even GLOWING NOSTRILS. So the big question is, how close is the right distance? We can find out through experimentation. The end result may be a bit of a compromise. This is relevant to both ray-traced and depth-mapped shadows, but I used ray-traced shadows for this demo. Also, I set the Shadow Blur Radius to zero. (Depth mapped shadows may have a minimum blur of one). 1. I set up a single broad light portrait scenario. In this image, the lights Shadow Min Bias is set at 0.05, which is clearly too low. The eyes look weird, and the strands of hair are casting shadows on each other, darkening the hair. The shadow around the jaw and under the straps look good. Note that a Bias setting of 0.0 will probably make Poser hang. 2. The Bias is set to 2.0, which is too high. A weird shadow appears on the hair, there are no shadows under the straps, and the jaw shadow obviously starts in the wrong place. The eyes look better, but have no shadows at all. The earrings are not casting shadows either. Worse, we have glowing nostrils but that may be hard to see. The teeth are also a bit bright. 3. Somewhere in between is the key. In this image, Bias is 1.0. The hair shadow is lessened, the neck shadow is a little better but still not right, there are still glowing nostrils, but the earrings are casting shadows again. The straps are only making partial, disjointed shadows - icky. 4. This is more like it, with Bias at 0.4. The straps and earrings have shadows, the jaw shadow is in the right place, and the nostrils aren't glowing. Close enough... 5. So, let's move the camera out, add some blur to the shadows, and crank up the quality for a final image! In summary, the default settings are usually reasonable, but if you're getting no shadows where there should be some, or shadows where there should be none, experiment with the Shadow Min Bias setting. It can make a big difference.