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You didn’t say if you were raytracing or raycasting, nor did you say if you were using Maya Software or mental ray to render ...
Depth map shadows, or “fake” shadows are very unrealistic but can be manipulated adequately in post. If you are using mental ray, don’t even think about using them. If you are using Maya, you can adjust the edges by increasing the filter, which can give a nice soft look to them.
The quality of the edges can be increased or decreased by adjusting the dMap Resolution - the higher the resolution, the crisper the edge, but the longer the render time. Anything beyond 1024 is almost not worth the time.
It’s best to output a separate shadow pass and adjust the blur, transparency and color in post.
Raytrace shadows are better across the board. If you aren’t raytracing your entire scene, consider doing a separate shadow pass and raytracing that. Raytrace shadows respect transparency and attenuation - i.e., the softening of a shadow as the distance from the object increases.
To soften the edges of a raytrace shadow, increase the light radius. Initially, this will decrease the overall quality of the shadow, which you can compensate for by increasing the number of shadow rays. Don’t be afraid to increase this to 10 or 20 or more - it will definitely give you a render-time hit, but that’s how it’s done.
For true realism, use mental ray; use mental ray area lights for nice, high quality, attenuated soft shadows.
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