hey neo thanks for the help. i took your advice and used the 'use background'. im having a another problem now. i can only see the shadow at certain angles. if im looking at the object straight on, then i cant see the shadow. but if i rotate the camera a little in either direction, the shadow appears. can i solve this problem or is it a computer graphics card problem? will it behave like this when i batch render? thanks again for the help.