Hi, I think there is a bug or some wierdness with Houdini and shadow rendring. For example i creaet a spot light, tell it to shadow, throw down a mantra rop and render. I should see a default diffuse lit scene with some shadowing from the spotlight. But all I get is a black frame.
If I turn raytrace shadows off, I see a normal diffuse lit scene but without shadows. I get the same behaviour with both raytrace and d-map shadows.

Any thoughts?
Thanks!

Make sure the light is looking at the hero area - once you switch to spotlight, it's important. You can look through the light to line it up, or possibly use a ‘Lookat’ in the lights transform tab.

Cheers,

J.C.