Hiya... Big probs. The most I can set my shadow maps to is 1024. However hard I try and however many lights are in the scene, I can't set past 1024. Sorry, but 1024 is NOT enough for a good crisp shadow... esp hair shadows on a portrait. I have had this problem since moving from Win98 to XP. Any ideas on how to sort this out?? H:)

Yep. Doubleclick on the dial, set the maximum to 4096 or whatever you want. OK that, then set your required size in the usual way.

Of course!!!!! Duh. case of "can't see the wood for the trees"! Mysterious how the maximum became changed, though, because this has only started recently. Thanks EnglishBob! I'll give it a try when I get home. H:)

I haven't tried it, but if you set the shadow map limits in your Preferred State PZ3, it should be applied to every new scene you start. Did you re-install Poser when you upgraded your OS? That may be the reason it's changed. As far as I know, 1024 is the default limit (and 256 the default map size), and has been since Poser 3. However the limit is an arbitrary one and really only depends on how much RAM you have.

Hey! Thanks! It`s so easy? I was thinking 1024 is the maximum i can have on my maschine EnglishBob, what is the limit with 256mb / 512mb ? Greetings,Webvogel

I was thinking that... I did re-install, and I had previously altered the preferred state file. I've 768MB Ram so I like to shove the shadow map right up to 4096 sometimes. I've been so busy writing PBooost that actually rendering in Poser has so many pitfalls I'd forgotten about!! H:)

There's no easy formula, Webvogel - you just have to try it. It will depend on what models you have in your scene, and the number and size of textures. I regularly go up to 4096, on one occasion I had 4096 on two lights at once with only 128M RAM - but that was with standard Poser figures, and few textures.

Basically the limit is the maximum amount of virtual memory you have. (RAM + swapfile) In a 32bit OS you will have a hard limit at 2GB. I have actually hit that limit myself by setting the shadow map size above 9000 :-) Swapping because of this isn't too bad, so don't hesitate to use sizes well beyond the amount of RAM in your machine. IMO Playing with larger shadowsizes is especially usefull for close-up shots of a face with shadows on it from hair strands.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.ez?Who=Spanki&ViewArticle=1265

I set mine to 8192 the other day, took ages to render but it looked really sharp, the ground plane tip came in very handy for this one too. Rob