Photometric light shadows

[RevitGary]

I am having some problems with my spotlights lights in an interior scene.

I got the jaggies. So I thought I should up the map size to get rid of them.

 

Well I started doing some research on the web and now I am really confused.

 

My shadow type was set to shadow maps. I dont know how it got that way. it appears this is not a good idea it should be set to area shadows.

 

Is using area shadows on spotlights the best option in an interior scene?

 

Or should it be one of the other 5 shadow settings?

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I think setting the shadows to Ray Traced is the best with MR.

 

Now, ...area shadows are nice, but do require extra memory to render. If you leave the Ray Traced Shadows set to point, then they are not Area Shadows. You can change the drop down from point to some other shape to create area shadows. Rectangle, disc, etc... Then you can set the shadow samples, Typically I use 8 for lights that are far away, and 16 for lights that are close.

 

MR does not respond well to shadow maps, but you can use them smoothly by upping the size. I think 512 is the default. This is a resolution setting, so upping this will smooth the shadows. If I remember correctly, 512 is the resolution the shadow will be rendered at on any given piece of geometry. So, if you have a large piece of geometry, a shadow map with the resolution of 512 has to be stretched across that piece of geometry. So, depending on the image resolution, a low res shadow map may easily create jaggies from the edges of the pixels. If you move the shadow map to a resolution of 2000 or so, it may smooth the jaggie edges.

 

The Ray Trace will typically be faster, and give you better detail near objects.