How to make and object cast absolutely no shadows at all in version 2.59?

Support Materials and Textures
1

Alright so I’m working on an image that is in remembrance of the Pearl Harbor attack back in 1941. It has a nurse during that time with an elaborate pearl necklace around her neck, but the pearl is scratched, beaten, dirty, just all around damaged. That pearl necklace is the symbolic element of this scene. (you can see that the necklace isn’t done)

Right now I’m working on a tear that is rolling down the nurse’s cheek. Since the nurse is a makehuman model I decided to not mess with any of the body mesh’s materials (I tried once to add another material and it screwed up the makehuman materials), so the teardrop is a separate mesh shrink wrapped to the body mesh. The teardrop is almost entirely transparent.

My problem is when I render the scene the image the teardrop comes out quite dark, I decided this was due to a shadow of the tear being cast onto the cheek. How do I make the teardrop not cast any shadows at all? I don’t want a lighter shadow, I want no shadows at all.

If you don’t think this is why the teardrop appears dark in the render please give me your other ideas of what might be causing this, but I’m pretty sure it’s the shadow that’s the problem. Please help! Thank you :slight_smile:

Here’s the render:

render7.jpg959×539 42.1 KB

…and here’s a screen shot of my transparency and shadow material settings:

2

I tried unchecking “receive” in the shadow panel of the body’s material settings. The teardrop looks great now, exactly what I want! BUT…

Look at where her coat meets her chest, it looks odd since the skin isn’t receiving the shadow from the jacket. There’s gotta be some way I can compromise between these to where I get the teardrop looking like the image in this reply but the shading like the image in the first post.

Please help!

render8.jpg959×539 38.5 KB

3

the material for the tear, uncheck “traceable” and “cast buffer shadows” then reset the sking material to catch shadows (now the tear no longer casts shadow)

4

Alternately, you can set the skin from the first post to “receive transparent” shadows. True this will have some shadowing on the skin, but for the a very transparent object such as your tear it should be almost unnoticeable. This would be what I call the proper way to do it, as in most cases of a transparent object you will want some shadow to still be cast.