Trying to emulate "Studio" Lighting for Product

[wmanning]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the shadow tool, unless you are referring to the SketchUp shadow tool (which we do not use).  Any change to SketchUp shadows that way is ignored as we only take the sun position.

To create a studio look like that I suggest a series of artificial lights all with somewhat low power that encircle the object and preferably from a couple of different elevations.

Attached is a model for a studio setup.  There are rings of lights pointed toward the location where the object could go (x marks the spot), and there is a Scene tab to move the camera to a possible position.  Import your object, place it on the X, go to Scene1, adjust your camera position, and try a sample render, adjust render settings, lighting, etc, and you should be good.

The softness of the shadows under the chess set is in good part due to the number of lights and their relative low power...

[lilyPad]

Oh ic now, thanks for the visual! makes its really easy to understand.

[wmanning]

And the model is there with the visual, so maybe it'll give you a quick and easy solution!