ASS exporting with 'Shadow Groups' mysteriously turned on in HTOA

[Anonymous]

I have a scene composed of a mountain with scattered greenery that I am exporting in entirety as an ASS scene ( without lights, cameras, etc ) to be plugged into a larger environment scene.

Everything renders fine locally but the ASS files i've been exporting, when previewed in isolation, have been intermittently rendering without shadows.

I've tracked down that this may due to something called a 'shadow group' that may exist on my geo. This is not something that has been defined by myself or anyone else working on this project. My geometry doesn't have an attribute that mentions anything about a 'shadow group'

I was able to demonstrate on the procedural itself that it is 'shadow group' related by modifying the user options at the object level with 'use_shadow_group on' and 'use_shadow_group off'.

How can I ensure that upon ASS export I don't have shadow groups in my scene? How do I identify and remove them?

[Stephen.Blair]

HtoA sets shadow groups (which are an Arnold thing) based on the Houdini shadow mask (shadowmask) parameter.