Increasing skylight shadow density

[karafa1]

When rendering with mental ray, is there is any way to make the skylight shadows more dens or more black?

as you can see in the image below, the spheres looks like they are not resting on the table, their shadow needs to be more dens, so is there is any way to do this?

[DanGrover]

The most obvious way is to turn AO on in the shaders (assuming you're using Arch and Design). This gives you the nice contact shadows you're looking for. I'm sure there's a way of doing it by tweaking the light settings a bit more, but I doubt it'll be as cheap as the AO solution in terms of rendering times.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I think it's mostly about GI's tendency to spread light. I did an FG only render and it has much more contrast across. AO is a nice handy solution but really it's a hack and it won't be lopsided so I'll see if I can find something I like better... I'm lame at GI, so this may take a while and fail...

 

I'm failing.

 

And the wall behind the camera tends to come out black.

[Francisco Penaloza]

if you are using skylight you'll have that problem, and yes Photons will tend to illuminate your shadows, one solution is to reduce your photon radius, then you'll have better definition in those areas, AO build in is not lame, it is a real solution for it, instead of do it later in post .

 

Other way is placing a portal light in your window and use only FG, leave the shadows on in the portal light and you may not need the AO in your material

reducing a little the exposure also will help.