You can uncheck "use displacement maps," unless you are actually using displacement maps (that is, have something connected to the displacement node in the material room).

Gaussian will soften the render somewhat - a little like blurring in Photoshop. If you're using dynamic hair, you might want to set Gaussian or Sync to 2 or so. It will make the hair look softer, and less like wire.

Increasing pixel samples will produce a higher quality render, but will be slower. Ditto shading rate, only lower is better. I sometimes lower it to 0.02, to make prop hair look nice. (You have to set it under object properties as well as in the render options. Which is good, because it means you can set it to different numbers for different items. Some things need a lower shading rate than others.)

Edited to make clear that lower shading rate is higher quality.

Message edited on: 12/12/2005 17:54