blurry shadows in mental ray

[Baothebuff]

Area shadows work for mental ray. What program are you using. In 3ds max you have to use one of the mr_xxx lights.

[mister3d]

Hi,

I have a question. You know how it says that area shadows don't work in mental ray, right? That leaves only raytraced shadows and shadow maps, which are both pretty sharp-edged. So how exactly do you get anything other than a perfectly defined shadow rendering in mental ray?

Hello Carlg!
I had this question too some time ago. What you mean is that when you setup area shadows, they don't work. The answer to this is yes, you must use raytraced shadows for mental ray with mr lights to achieve area shadows. Just create mr area light and go to parameters menu of it-area light parameters. Now you must make your light a bit bigger to produce soft shadows.The bigger it is, the softer shadows are. Just make the radius bigger and hit render! You will have area shadows with raytrace! That's how it works. The samples are like point lights, if you have u 5 and v 5 lights, you have 25 point lights, that together produce soft shadows. More lights - softer shadows.

[carlg]

Thanks for your suggestions. I will try both that and also the scanline with radiosity on and see which looks better.

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