cheers

its an ambient occlusion render, of which I am very new to using ha so I dont no, didnt think I touched anything to do with shadows. il have a play with some settings in it and see if it gets any better.

as for texturing I still dont fully understand it, I jsut use simple blinn and lambert materials and play with lights till it looks ok lol. will have to look into shaders and UV mapping some time.