Quote: "Why is it that you have to point a light directly at an object to get shadows? Is there no other way?"
Is there any other way to see shadows if no light hits it? try to go to a dark room and check if you can see any shadows... of course not. Bring a flashlight: Voilá, shadows.
Same thing happens with DB and real life... and even in the space.
NOW if you wanted to simulate shadows... that's something really tricky... and I've seen it possible only in DBPro, not DBC... DBC has a nice light+simulated-shadows system... in fact, there's an example in the Light3D help where you can see how can you generate shadows using an object (in that case a sphere) over a matrix... I'm not sure if it works with other objects though, but it casts shadows on a matrix... so if you're using one I guess it's no problem, right? You could also do, as John Y said, use a plane on the floor which moves with the object... kinda like the PSX games (or Tomb Raider, Soul Reaver, DarkStone, etc).
