Least expensive way of producing good looking shadows?
 

Hi all,

I was wondering what's the best set up to use if you want to create decent looking soft shadows? Nothing insanely detailed or realistic, just some basic shadows that look nice and won't take hours to render a single frame? Say I have a scene with a building and an exterior. I have a directional light coming from outside to simulate the sun, and then I have an area light inside to get some shadows, but when I render it out everything is just practically pitch black inside. So I tried adding an ambient light inside and turning the intensity down, but even with it turned down it just negates all the shadows, and if I tweak the ambient light enough to get some shadows, the shadows look incredibly grainy and just horrible.

Are you using raytrace shadows? Depth map shadows take less time to render, just adjust the resolution and filter size (I think those are the options, don't have maya in front of me, sorry).

it's hard to vote when you can only watch 2 sec of video then have to wait 2 minutes while utube stalls.

I will have to try and download the videos because I don't have the patients to take 40 minutes to watch 15 seconds of video. lol

Wrong thread, but thanks for the video watching effort! Sorry about the slow youtube...

ok i think you are talkin about interior lightin check into fg n gi n also portal lights .to reduce ur render times check on fg n gi maps