Anthony Appleyard posted at 11:50PM Thu, 03 March 2016 - #4259124

But in Superfly (or in Firefly), how can I get the result in outdoor scenes, of edges of shadows being a bit blurred because the sun is a finite size (half a degree of angle, as seen from Earth) and not a point light source?

Use a little Shadow Blur Radius on the infinite light source. I'm not sure about this, but I think the value is supposed to represent the angular diameter of the light source.

Regarding the "sandy effect" - as kalrua says. The grainy effect is normal render 'noise' due to the randomised sampling giving varying results. As you increase the number of samples, these variances are averaged out until eventually there is no visible noise. Usually there will be some surfaces in a scene that are more noisy than others.

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)