what's wrong with my render? shadows problem

[n88tr]

I was trying to follow this tutorial for working on my lighted scenes

http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/rendering_a_quick_realistic_scene_with_mental_rays _final_gather

But mine doesn't look quite like that. I have some strange shadows and artifacts if I'm using that term right. I could use some help fixing them.

http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/3037/empireswatchtowercon3.png

Thanks a lot.

[daverave]

I think your shadow resolution is set to low, bump it up,,,,,,,,,,,dave

[n88tr]

Ok, but now my image looks like a gaussian blur is all over it

[Joopson]

Wait, are you using depthmap shadows or raytracing?

(Looks like depthmap to me, but I'm not sure. If so, switch to raytracing. If not, well, I'm not quite sure)

[mastone]

If you use depth map it projects over all the geometry of the scene the lightrays "touch" so disable the cast shadows attribute of the groundplane , maybe up the resolution if you get stairstepping

[Joopson]

Wait, does final gather even work with depthmap? I didn't think so, but no one seems to be mentioning that....

[BrianM]

I've had the same problem. Make sure that "use mid distance" is checked under depth map shadows, it's on by default by you might have turned it off by accident. You can also try to increase the bias value, these are the two main attributes to reduce shadow map artifacts.