So, it's important that the shadows don't look blotchy.

You can see the problem on the shadow falling across the closed eye on the lefthand side of the figure's face.

How do I solve this?

I think I might have used some kind of shadow blur on previous similar situation, but I'd rather keep an edge -- if I can.

I'm running Poser 7 SP3 and using the standard firefly settings.  (I didn't want to try a realskin shader and custom settings until I figured out how to solve this -- though I might try that before I hear back.)

As always, any help appreciated.

Please describe your lights in detail. This is a lighting problem, so the more information you submit, the better.

Also, what do you mean by "standard Firefly settings"? Standard is automatic, which is sub-optimal.  Can you put up a screen shot of your render settings? or give us more detail about them?

On the light that cast shadow, I would think the the bias is too high.
In figure of this size, I would set bias to 0.15

Result is attached.

Robyn - I'm not sure I have the vocabulary to describe the lights in detail.  I tend to work intuitively, find lights from sets I have, and then modify them a bit.  (Moving, changing color, etc.)  I'm not very technical with Poser, though I'm learning.

In this light set, which came from DM's moon cult,  there were orignally 4 lights, all infinite.

2 are now infinite with no shadows.

1 light, an overhead one, is infinte but has shadows (which I didn't know until you asked).

The main light was an infitite that I turned into a spot. It is set to cast shadows.  It's min bias is now set to .15, though that didn't seem to help -- just made things different.

I am using a mid-level automatic render setting currently, where you get some shadows, etc but not final render quality.

Is this enough info to help?

These render settings are pretty close to what I use for final renders. But I use the FFR script to fine tune the settings.

Are your shadows raytraced or shadowmapped? You may not have enough bounces to deal with the transmapped hair and the hood.

Bounces have nothing to do with shadows. They count for reflection and refraction (spawning a new ray is a "bounce"). A shadow is not spawning a new ray - it is ending the current ray.

if you are using mapped shadows then check the resolution of the shadow map (256 may be too small) and switch to the shadow cam and check that it is adjusted to the scene. It should cover just the area being rendered.

Try ray traced shadows instead.

Quote - Bounces have nothing to do with shadows. They count for reflection and refraction (spawning a new ray is a "bounce"). A shadow is not spawning a new ray - it is ending the current ray.

And the shadow is behind transmapped hair. Anyway why dont you tell us what the problem is instead of what it isn't.

Quote - And the shadow is behind transmapped hair.

I'm not understanding how that is a response to anything I said. Transparency has nothing to do with reflection or refraction. It does not involve the spawning of an additional ray. Therefore it has nothing to do with bounces. If you're arguing otherwise, I suggest you do an experiment with 0 bounces - raytraced shadows still work which should demonstrate my point.

Quote - Anyway why dont you tell us what the problem is instead of what it isn't.

Because I don't know what the problem is - I did not see any settings posted - were they? I've given up guessing at the thousand things people do wrong.

You're talking about the little points around the shadows ?

If yes, check the shadows blur radius of the light , 0=sharp 20=soft

In the render settings increase the pixel samples to 4 or 6 ( carreful, more will slowdown the render ) and change the post filter to sync and value 2

You know I'm guessing, but logic seems to say this:

The shadow is cast by the opaque hair parts and not by the transparent hair parts.

The definition of what is opaque and what is transparent here is the transparency map of the hair.

Transmaps are subject to the same aliasing problems as any other map.

Grainy results are usually the result of failure to react to aliasing problems.

Therefore I'm guessing the map needs anti-aliasing.

Either:

Use render settings that will address aliasing

or

Use texture filtering on the transmap.

or

Go into an image editing program and make a smaller, less-detailed version of the transmap. Use that instead.

Anthanasius gave good input on the render settings: pixel samples 4 to 6 will reduce aliasing problems. Also note that sampling of the map is controlled by the min shading rate, so one would also want the min shading rate down to .2 before looking elsewhere for the problem.

Attached Link: Snowraven Wallpaper

I want to thank you all for chirping in on this.  I'm learning, if slowly.

New computer, new OS (Win 7), so I wasn't immediately sure how to screen cap.  (Probably it's the same -- alt+printscrn, but...)

In any case, I decided that it would be faster to try and use the setting ONNETZ suggested (above), and see if that worked.

Clearly, it's improved, but it's still a little smudgy to the right of the main hairline shadow on the figure's lefthand side.

Obviously, I'm past my level of knowlege here.

What I'd ideally like is the knife-like hair shadows, similar to those on my Snowraven render.  Obviously, just lucked into that with that hair and light set and whatever.  I'm attaching a URL for that image.

I will try the additional settings that Anthansius suggested on my next pass.

But here's where it's at now.

Okay, looking carefully at the last render (after a Poser crash probably caused by an unrelated update), I think that the problem is nearly licked.

I'm trying it again with the blur factor of 2 on the light in question, to see if that helps.  But I think the issue may be one of resolution on the hair maps at this point.

Looking closely, I see that the "smudge" on the face seems to be made up of the same pixilation I see in the hair near it.  (It's better with these settings, and we'll see whether it smooths out in the blur.)

I may also try the post filter on "sinc" and 2, to see if that will even it out a bit more.

But at least it's close now.

Thank you all.

I"m currently rendinging, which is taking a long while.

Would setting up multi-thread and/or separate process rendering (which I've just discovered the options for) help with the speed at this point?

(I have only a dual-core machine.)

Again, thanks for all the help.

If you are only rendering in one thread now then rendering in two threads will help a bit.

In win 7 for screen captureing I just hit printscreen and paste into an image editor.

Do you have win 7 64 bit or 32 bit?

Another thing I do sometimes for render settings is to set the shading rate for the hair to match what I have in render settings.  Most hair is set to .20.

What hair is that anyway? kimbra or guilty?

I have just one rendering thread now; I'll up it to 2.

I think I have 64 bit Win 7, though I'm not sure.

Having had an old computer until very recently, I'm not used to being able to run an image editor (Photoshop) at the same time I run anything else.  Certainly not with Poser running, too -- until now, maybe.

The hair is the v4 Ranger hair from DAZ (part of the Ranger package, though it has a separate morph/mat set which I wish I'd gotten now when it was on sale; penny wise, pound foolish).

I have no idea how to set the shading rate for the hair (to match the render settings).  I'm much more of a writer/artist than a program geek -- though I'm willing to learn.

In poser make sure the hair object is selected. If its a figure then for body part just select body. Then in the parameter window there are two tabs. One tab shows all the morphs, and transformations. The other tab is properties. Click onto that and you will see settings like visible in raytracing, visible, cast shadows, and a couple others. Scroll down and you should see a setting for shading rate.  Also make sure visible in raytracing is checked.

For draft renders its very helpful to uncheck visible in ray tracing for the hair. It will dramatically speed up your render times. Depending on what your going for in the final image you might even be able to get away with leaving it unchecked for your final render.  But ir you using ray traced shadows then the hair wont cast any shadows. This is where depth mapped shadows can come in handy. Ray traced shadows usually look much better though.

Cool.  I know where that tab is, but I didn't know that use for it vis the hair (or anything else).

Turns out, my renders were being slow (and crashing) because of a problem with the floor in the scene: I used a PP version rather than a P5 version under the mistaken believe that PP was the newer/better program.  (Thought it was between 5 & 6, instead of between 4 & 5, which it is.)

It kept looking for a bump map, which wasn't where it expected -- in the textures file.  So it just kep looking.  It wouldn't let me remove the floor and replace it (on advice from the creator); the program would just crash.  So I took the texture bump jpg, duplicated it, and then renamed the copy to the file the PP floor expected to find.

Which, apparently, it did.

Suddenly, no crashes and vastly faster renders.  Of course, I took the advice about 2 threads and such, too.

So, now it's running fine, I've got a setting for the render I can live with, and I learned a lot, too.  The final result looks a lot like the one I last posted -- though that's a close-up of the image I intend to use as a cover.

And I learned a heck of a lot.

Thanks to you and all the other fine folks who chimed in.

The Renderosity boards are the best!