Where is this surface shadow coming from?
I've stripped out every other mesh from the placeable, and I'm left with one single plane converted to a mesh that has wonky shadow on its surface that I can't rid myself of. After several hours in shadow as it were, I'm really stumped. It changes the shading as the camera is panned vertically; it stays constant when the camera is panned horizontally though.
Based on those screenshots, it looks like there's some other shadow-casting light which is already causing the placeable to "self-shadow", which is the shadow you find annoying. This is either coming from some other light in the scene, somewhat behind it, or from one of the environmental lights such as the "sun" or the "interior light". If this is the case, you could probably make the self-shadowing go away by switching the lighting scheme to "Interior, Torch-Lit Only", though you might not be happy with having to make that change.
The volumetric shadows in NWN are very realistic, way more realistic than most computer games which include shadows. But you can run into situations apparently like this where you get shadows going two different ways because of (presumably) two different light sources and one of them isn't being cancelled out as nicely as it would be in real life under similar lighting conditions.
As to why the shading changes when panned vertically and not horizontally, this is almost certainly due to the "Shadow Opacity" setting in the Environmental Options dialog for the environmental lighting preset you're using.
Those are just my guesses, anyway.
Fixed it by replacing the mesh with...a mesh of the same proportions and texture. Now it works. *scratches head* The new placeable is in the exact same place that the old one was, and the phantom shadow is gone. 
Fixed it by replacing the mesh with...a mesh of the same proportions and texture. Now it works. *scratches head* The new placeable is in the exact same place that the old one was, and the phantom shadow is gone.
Any chance you could zip up both versions and pop them on MediaFire or something? I'd love to try to see what the deal was. It doesn't sound like you did anything different. (?) The only way I can think of where that would happen is if, on the original, you didn't have an Aurora Trimesh modifier at all, but on the "new" one, you did and it was set with Shadow (and Render, of course) ticked, or something like that.
Any chance you could zip up both versions and pop them on MediaFire or something? I'd love to try to see what the deal was. It doesn't sound like you did anything different. (?) The only way I can think of where that would happen is if, on the original, you didn't have an Aurora Trimesh modifier at all, but on the "new" one, you did and it was set with Shadow (and Render, of course) ticked, or something like that.
*blushing* I didn't save the old version. Sorry. And about trimesh, render, and shadow; seeing as I've never even touched any of those settings (let alone know where they all are) I'm fairly certain that wasn't it. I'm just a *ehm* fledgling raven, and can barely waddle around the nwmax nest at the moment. I'm learning though. Building with other people's work is easy. Creating something from nothing is... Well, I tend to think it takes a fair helping of sorcery. Or dragon fire. Something like that.
I have seen this occur where a model uses alternate geometry (render =0 shadow = 1) for a shadow rather than the presumably more complicated geometry of the object itself (render = 1 shadow = 0), *and* the alternate shadow model is smaller than the true rendered model. I am not sure how that woudl happen though with the plane like object in your screenshot. I have had knock down, drag out battles with fixing shadows....
*blushing* I didn't save the old version. Sorry. And about trimesh, render, and shadow; seeing as I've never even touched any of those settings (let alone know where they all are) I'm fairly certain that wasn't it. I'm just a *ehm* fledgling raven, and can barely waddle around the nwmax nest at the moment. I'm learning though. Building with other people's work is easy. Creating something from nothing is... Well, I tend to think it takes a fair helping of sorcery. Or dragon fire. Something like that.
Upon further review, I did still have it:
# Exported from NWmax 0.8 b61 at 3/5/2014 4:01:25 PM
# mdl file
#
#NWmax MODEL ASCII
# model: wall_01
#local file: C:\gmax\Scenes\crypt_pillar_01_test1.gmax
filedependancy crypt_pillar_01_test1.gmax
newmodel wall_01
setsupermodel wall_01 null
classification Character
setanimationscale 1.0
#NWmax GEOM ASCII
beginmodelgeom wall_01
node dummy wall_01
parent NULL
endnode
node trimesh PlasterWall02
parent wall_01
position 1.24594 0.533809 0.212846
orientation 0.0 0.0 -1.0 -0.794125
wirecolor 0.878431 0.341176 0.560784
ambient 1.0 1.0 1.0
diffuse 1.0 1.0 1.0
specular 0.0 0.0 0.0
shininess 10.0
bitmap Plaster_Wall_01
verts 4
-0.900323 0.275013 0.0
-0.150361 0.2751 0.0
-0.900323 0.275013 1.75
-0.150361 0.2751 1.75
faces 2
0 1 3 8 4 5 7 5
3 2 0 8 7 6 4 5
tverts 12
0.5 0.0 0
1.0 0.0 0
0.5 0.5 0
1.0 0.5 0
0.5 0.0 0
1.0 0.0 0
0.5 0.5 0
1.0 0.5 0
0.5 0.0 0
1.0 0.0 0
0.5 0.5 0
1.0 0.5 0
endnode
endmodelgeom wall_01
donemodel wall_01
It's because of a bad pivot position. If you have MDA's NWMaxPlus, there's a tool under the "Plus" roll-out which helps you easily setting the pivot to the centre of the model - that usually fixes most of these issues. Make sure to reset X-form afterwards (under the "Mesh Tools" roll-out.)
Also, you have some left-over tverts, but I guess that's less important now if you simply just remade the model 
It's because of a bad pivot position. If you have MDA's NWMaxPlus, there's a tool under the "Plus" roll-out which helps you easily setting the pivot to the centre of the model - that usually fixes most of these issues. Make sure to reset X-form afterwards (under the "Mesh Tools" roll-out.)
Also, you have some left-over tverts, but I guess that's less important now if you simply just remade the model
Ahh...I didn't realize the pivot point would have any influence on the exported model. Thanks.
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