"As for your shadows in the example above, I don't see the "bug" - help me out here - what do you expect from plastic hair without any transparancy?" ok, here's another one. a good render. with red colour. with circles and numbers. see how the shadows disappear when the hair gets too close to the face (1)? or to her shoulder (2)? that's why her nostrils get no shadow at all, or why the nose sometimes casts no shadow on the face. larger shadow map has nothing to do with it: when you make shadow map larger you only get sharper shadows. in these image there's only one light casting shadow with the shadow map of 2000 pixels. "But what has all of this to do with the Galleries on RR anyway?" message nr. 6 soulhuntre, you're right, that's exactly what i meant with "focus of the image".