Is there anyway to blur ray-traced shadows other than in postwork? I like using raytracing for the speed (in P7) and for AO, but the shadows always seem so crisp.

I'm confused as to why you ask the question - do you not see a "Shadow Blur Radius" parameter on your lights?

I thought that the Sahdow Blur Radius only applied to Shadow Mapped lights. I didn;'t realize that it applied to ray-tracing as well.

Oh - well there ya go - it does. However, I'll tell you before you try it that at larger settings, it doesn't blur nicely - instead it basically looks dirty at the edges. It works sort of like how Poser does "soft" reflections and refractions. Basically it applies a variable noise function to distort the results. Not always the best. I prefer to always use depth-mapped shadows. I know they take a while to generate, but if you turn on shadow map caching, then they only generate once and get reused. This is way faster if you're iterating on varying the textures (shaders) and the light strength. You only need to calculate new shadow maps if you move a prop, figure, or light.

Cached depth-mapped shadows are way faster than ray-traced.

Good point. I'll try that. And then I can render using ray-tracing for AO, and for real-reflections if I need them, but with shadows off, and then combine with a shadows only pass and multiply the shadow layer with the main layer. Cool.

A word of caution: while blurred raytraced shadows look great and realistic, they can be a killer if you use it in combination with ambient occlusion on transmapped hair that is set to cast shadows and be visible in raytracing. Michal 4blueyes

Quote - A word of caution: while blurred raytraced shadows look great and realistic, they can be a killer if you use it in combination with ambient occlusion on transmapped hair that is set to cast shadows and be visible in raytracing. Michal 4blueyes

I now know what I'll post for DAZ's platinum club contest this month -- Bald Vicky in a Temple with a Sword :)