Mastering Shadows
By Olivier Saraja


 
S  t  e  p   4 :

Size of the Spot (SpotSi)
The angle of beam of your spot also has a great effect on the blocky look of your shadows. I rendered the previous pictures with a SpotSi set to 120.00 degrees.
 
 
 
BufSi set to 512, but SpotSi set to 120.00 degrees
Zoom: As seen previously, the shadow is blocky

Now let see how well does the rendering with a smaller beam, set to 60.00 degrees.
 
BufSi set to 512, but SpotSi set to 60.00 degrees
Zoom: The shadow is more progressive, but less than with a higher BufSi

It is clear enough that the smallest the angle of beam is, the sharper the borders of the shadows are. There's an immediate conclusion to this : before setting the BufSi to any great value, first enhance the quality of your shadows by seting the SpotSi value as small as possible ! You will spare both memory and rendering time ! We could say that SpotSi behaves as the Lens of a camera does.