Soft Shadows

[gazmon]

Hiya
Just wondered if anyone has any tips on creating soft edged shadows without increasing render times a lot. Im currently using point lights but tried area lights to get soft shadows and the rendering time at least tripled.
Gaz

[mattclary]

You can try the "Spinning Light Trick". Can't find the link right now, but in a nutshell, you use several lights (probably distant lights), parent them to a null and spin the null 720 degrees per frame. Turn on motion blur and you get passable soft shadows. You can take a look at Eki Hakka's web site, he has a plugin or Lscript that makes it really easy to set up.

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/links.php?action=jump&id=8

[gazmon]

That rings a bell from one of the DVD lessons that came with Lightwave-will dig it out.
cheers.