Weird shadows with mental ray

[kenney001]

I am trying to use mental ray to render a school project, but i keep getting weird shading screw-ups with it, almost like its sample rate is extremely low.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h94/vote1sanches/shadowscrewup.jpg

that is a default grey material on the switchplate, and the scene is rendered with 2 omni lights with shadows set to mental ray shadowmapping..

When i set shadows on the omni's to Ray Traced (not advanced raytrace), it looks much better, however I dont get a smooth shadow like mental ray can do. This one looks too computer generated, and sharp. Is there a way to smooth the shadows out?

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h94/vote1sanches/shadowsraytraced.jpg

[Dr Nick]

How does Mental Ray work anyway?

[LlamaMaster]

I don't know about mental ray, but for soft shadows for advanced ray trace are easy. Just go into the advanced ray trace parameters and increase the value of the shadow spread.

[Chewy Gumball]

Or set it to shadow map in the shadow parameters in the light.

[kenney001]

i appologise. i meant Ray Traced Shadows. big difference......sorry.
Shadow map produced very weak shadows, and didnt look good at all. I messed with the density settings for it, but to no avail.

[Zeph]

erm, turn down the omnis? Either that or use spots.

[LlamaMaster]

i appologise. i meant Ray Traced Shadows. big difference......sorry.
Shadow map produced very weak shadows, and didnt look good at all. I messed with the density settings for it, but to no avail.
Why not just do what I said? It works and you can control how sharp the shadows are...

[kenney001]

because mental ray cant do advanced raytrace shadows....

anyways...I increased the samples from the default 4 to 150 as i found in a tutorial, and it seems to have fixed it.

Thanks

[DaneO'Roo]

because mental ray cant do advanced raytrace shadows....

incorrect.

[kenney001]

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h94/vote1sanches/mentalrayerror.jpg

then why does it do this, and why do the tutorials also say it only supports ray-trced and shadow map?

"MSG 0.0 error: Shadow generator "Adv. Ray Traced" on light "Omni01" is unsupported (mental ray only supports raytraced and shadow maps). Using raytraced shadows."