I know soft shadows are more realistic, but every time I try to use them in scenes I am grossly unhappy with the result.  Normally it seems like there are almost no shadows at all, and what once looked good to me (and fairly realistic) now does not.  Now I know it isnt necessary that images look realistic, and since my images are of my own world it's certainly up to me to make that decision, nevertheless I would like to have more realism in my images and want to find out the best ways to use soft shadows.....so, anyone have any suggestions? 

Thanks again for all your recent help, especially you, Artur....you've helped me immensely.....

I'd have to see a before/after picture to know the range of the shadows problem.

It's not necessarily a problem (well it is, but I dont really have enough time right now to render two pictures and upload them)....I just want to know if anyone has a link to some good tutorials dealing with soft shadows....

how much softness are you using ? I rarely set it above about 5% and I tend to set the shadow density to about 85% as well

Soft shadows are subjective.  No two people will have the best settings for them.  But seeing two images side by side will get a reaction as to which looks better and whether you are approaching reality or imaginary.

Hi,

Soft shadows are a balancing act of many different elements of Vue lighting and depends what's in the scene. It should be fairly easy with Vues bread and butter of mother earth, but gets trickier when adding animals, people etc. It is difficult (for me) to help  without a reference picture/s.

Chris

If the sun is involved I use 1% soft shadow, and around 90% shadow density. It works for me.:biggrin:

From your description, it sounds to me (although I could be wrong) as if Vue automatically changed the shadows into "shadow map". Vue does this whenever you have a volumetric sunlight and you add softness  to it. Vue assumes that you want this because volumetric soft lights are fairly slow to render.

To change this, you edit the sun's properties, go to tab Shadows and uncheck "use shadow map". Of course, render times will increase. Alternatively, you can keep the shadow map and increase the Size in Quality section. I normally use 4096 for the size (this impacts RAM but I have plenty).

My soft shadows are also normally between 1 and 5%, like said above, or less (for example, my "bay of ortus" has 0.25% - look at the shadows from the leaves in the foreground).

Frank uses shadow density at 85%. This is the recommendation you'll find in many places, in order not to have pitch black shadows, which are not realistic. In former times, I also used to do the same, but not anymore. I found that, in certain atmospheres, setting the shadow density below 100% can create noise in the shadows and make a somewhat strange look. Now, I keep my shadow density at 100% and use "sky dome lighting gain" instead to compensate for that and have "normal" shadows, not competely dark. Almost all my images have "sky dome lighting gain". The intensity varies, but it can go from 0.5 to 10. I adjust it to what I feel is right in each situation, I don't have any "recipe".

If all of the above didn't solve your problem, you'd better post some screenshots of your results and your settings. Because your atmospheres are quite unique, your problems are also probably quite unique. :-)

What I think happens here is that , as Rutra says, the shadow is set to "shadow map-raytraced hard shadow", guess you are using a spotlight here. If you then add softness to the shadows from the object properties panel ( preview sphere, upper right corner), you can actually lose the shadow completely.
So for soft shadows, I would recommend:
Using "shadow map-soft shadows", but the results may nopt be accurate for a spotlight, you'll need a fairly big map to get pleasing results ( check the auto size button, and limit the max size to 2048, if you go higher, there's no point using a map). This works well for a point light, should not be used for the sun
Or raytraced shadows with 5% softness added from the object properties panel. This will give you 100% accurate shadows, with physically correct blurring on the edges of the shadows the further away the shadow is from the lightsource, at the expense of longer render times.
Or for a spotlight, shadow map-raytraced hard shadow, without any softness.
As for 100% shadows, I rarely leave it at that, I go for 85% as well, and I never noticed noise due to this, would love to see an example, Artur.

Quote - "Using "shadow map-soft shadows", but the results may nopt be accurate for a spotlight, you'll need a fairly big map to get pleasing results ( check the auto size button, and limit the max size to 2048, if you go higher, there's no point using a map). This works well for a point light, should not be used for the sun."

Bruno, I use it for the sun as well. The render with shadow map is much faster than without it, even if the map is at 4096 (which is what I usually use).

Quote - "Or raytraced shadows with 5% softness added from the object properties panel. This will give you 100% accurate shadows, with physically correct blurring on the edges of the shadows the further away the shadow is from the lightsource, at the expense of longer render times."

Yes, especially because to eliminate the grain it's many times necessary to increase the quality sliders (either in the Light tab of the atmosphere, if it's the sun, or in the Volumetric tab of the light properties, if it's another type of light).

Quote - "As for 100% shadows, I rarely leave it at that, I go for 85% as well, and I never noticed noise due to this, would love to see an example, Artur."

I will try to create an example this weekend (I barely have time to Vue during weekdays).
Indeed, there is noise, especially on vegetation. I started suspecting this when I was working an aerial view of a mountain covered with trees. In the shadow areas, the trees were looking really weird. I set the shadow density to 100% and used sky dome lighting gain instead, and not only I eliminated the noise, I also got a much more pleasing result, visually speaking. Try it for yourself, you'll see. This might also depend on other circumstances (light model, etc), I'm not sure, so it might not be immediate to detect this, but it exists. Anyway, regardless of noise, it looks much better with sky dome lighting gain, IMO, and that's a sufficiently good enough reason for me to use it.

Thanks, Artur, I'll look for some shadow noise, then! As for the sun, do you use hard or soft shadow maps?

Quote - "As for the sun, do you use hard or soft shadow maps?"

Hmmm... I don't remember and can't check now. I'll get back on this later.

Ok, Thanks.

I just checked now and I use ray-trace hard shadow maps. For example, my image "sic transit gloria mundi" has a volumetric sunlight, 5% softness, ray-traced shadow map, shadow density 100%, sky dome lighting gain of 3.5, radiosity, with gain of 2. 

Oh, ,OK, raytraced maps look better than soft ones for the sun.