Hi...... when I create an exterior scene and rendered in vray I cannot make the shadows soft. Whatever lights I use such as direct or daylight, I adjust the color of the shadow in shadow parameters rollout. though I select grey color and reduced the density to 0.5 shadows are very dark and full black. My vray settings are as follows… I check enable built in frame buffer and get resolution from max. then uncheck default lights and hidden lights. then in image sampler i select adaptive DMC and size 1.5 anti aliasing filter. In environment i select light blue color and multiplier to 0.3. I also check GI and set both primary and secondary bounces to 0.8. In lightings I use either daylight or target direct with intensity 1 to 1.15. And of course shadows is vray shadows and its color grey and density 0.7. Dark shadows give a scene a shabby look i feel. please tell me whats wrong in my settings.
Thanks in advance.

If your shadows are coming out generally too dark, there’s a problem with your settings. You shouldn’t have to change shadow colours. What GI settings are you using? And have you enabled gamma correction?

I’m not sure what V-Ray’s default setting is but generally you’d want to make sure its gamma correction is set to 2.2. It’s a bit of a minefield but there’s loads of stuff about it on the ‘net… just search for “V-Ray gamma correction” or “linear workflow” or something like that.

Also, you could turn you primary and secondary bounces up to 1.0 (physically correct). And choosing light cache for the secondary bounce engine might help get some extra light into the shadows, too.

If I enable area shadows and increase U and V values it gets blurred. But it remains black and look grainy also. So I set the U value just little higher than default (like 12 or 13). Even then it looks grainy. I enabled gamma 2.2 also.

Hi Victory Dream,

Although the topic on lighting and global illumination in any render engine are the subject of many hours of discussion, here are some quick pointers that may help you with your exterior shadows in VRay.

If you are doing a daylit scene, try to use the VRaySun light. It’s a pretty good ‘drop in’ lighting system for exteriors that will accurately calculate the light in your scene. When you drop it in your scene VRay will ask if you want to add VRaySky as an environment light. Say yes. This will be the default environment in Max (Shorcut key 8). Keep an instance of the VRayEnvironment in your material editor - any adjustments will give you a real-time preview of changes.

If you do not want the sky to be ‘visible’ but would still like the global illumination from it, drag the VRaySky from your environment slot into your ‘Global Illumination’ override in your VRay render settings.

Make sure you’ve only got one ‘GI Environment’ - in other words, don’t use it in your max as well as VRay environment.

The intensity of the shadows of your sun can be adjusted like so:
In your VRaySun options - the lower the ‘size’ value the sharper your shadows edges. The higher the size value the blurrier your shadow edges will be. The default is 1.0.

Sharp: 0.01 (very bright clear skies)
Blurry: 6.0 (kind of cloudy)

About gamma correction:
In your VRay color mapping settings, these will usually produce the best results:
Color mapping: Linear Multiply
Dark Multiplier 1.0
Light Mulitplier 1.0
Gamma: 2.2

Look up ‘linear workflow’ with VRay on the net. It’s a bit of a ‘minefield’ as has been said already, but this is the thing that will affect the accuracy of your lighting setup.

Also, if you’re trying to get a good starting basis you can keep primary and secondary bounces at 1.0. Most people tend to you Irradiance mapping for primary and light cache for secondary.

You can also keep anti-aliasing turned off for test renders, it won’t affect the color of your shadows and will speed up seeing your test results.

Hope this helps.

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