2008

If shadows appear too coarse when you render them, increase the map size.
The size can range from 0 to 10,000. However, be aware that greater size
requires more memory and can take longer to generate. A 4096-line shadow
map occupies 64 MB of memory (4096 x 4096 x 4).
If you have enough RAM to hold the entire scene including shadow maps,
shadows don't affect performance, but if the renderer has to use a virtual
memory swap file, rendering time can slow considerably.
The default shadow map size is 256.
The bitmap used by shadow maps must fill the area covered by the falloff of
the spotlight. The wider the falloff, the coarser the shadow appears. Keep the
falloff as tight as possible given the requirements of your scene.
Shadow Map (mental ray Renderer)
A shadow map is a bitmap that the mental ray renderer generates during a
pre-rendering pass of the scene. Shadow maps can require less calculation
time than ray-traced shadows, but the shadows they generate can be less
accurate.
The mental ray renderer saves shadow maps as
ZT files on page 7978 . Shadow
map controls are on the Render Scene dialog > Renderer panel >
Shadows &
Displacement rollout
on page 6114 .
7928 | Glossary