grainy shadows
 

Hi
I am trying to cast shadows with GI ,
and getting grainy shadows with Dmap
or even with area light with raytrace shdows.
I want to use GI and still get soft shadows.
thanks
D

if the gi shadows are not soft enough, you might want to combine final gather and gi. that will give very very very soft shadows.

FG does create soft shadows,but using both GI and FG
is very expensive,and you can't realy control how soft the shadows are in FG.
The area light function suppose to soften shadows in GI but it makes the shadows grainy for me....WHY?????????

Use raytraced shadows.Those will give u sharp edged shadows.Now the trick to making them softer is to use the area light option in your light attributes.U can choose Sphere, cube etc.Scale the respected choice (sphere, cube)according to your scene.Play around with the samples settings within the area light options.Increasing the samples = increasing render times.Overall using the area light within the mental ray light will dramatically increase render time.Try it out.