Is there a way to get soft shadows if your scene is illuminated with an environment light only? Do I have to do it in separate render passes?

I noticed some of the lights allow you to input a shadow shader, but I did not see this input in the environment light

Thanks in advance

what do you mean by soft shadows?
environment light has softest shadows possible

but it highly depends on your HDRI map, so you can get sharper or softer shadow according to the bright parts in your HDRI map (intensity and size of that part matters)

you can append Shadow Shader rendering property to any light if you want to use custom Shadow Shader

I think the HDR map that I am using may be causing the sharper shadows I am seeing. Let me try hooking up a shadow shader via rendering property like you mentioned (do you happen to have any screenshots of what that shop network looks like?)

actually yes, I have posted one quite recently
http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/13022-light-and-shadow/page__view__findpost__p__81795 [forums.odforce.net]

but I doubt shadow shader will solve your problem with environment light since the shadow shader probably uses just single ray per sample, you can of course make it fire more rays in cone, but that will be double sampling (because it is already happening) and you will just slow things down unnecessarily , on the other hand if you don't try it, you never know how it behaves

however, I would edit HDRI map on your place, maybe blur it a little or use another if you are not satisfied

or make other lights to produce just shadows

of course I am just guessing since I haven't seen your picture

Hi ,
The purpose of the Env light is surely there to provide overall fill to your shot. So you want to increase the exposure of the fill to lift the shadowed areas.

rob

@circusmonkey - In my case, I am using the env light as my main light source (from an HDR capture). I do like having the shadows there, but need them to be just a little softer

@tamte - Thank you for pointing my out to that topic! I will check out the hip file as soon as I get a chance to see if the shadow shader may do the trick. I also do not mind trying out blurring the map or adding shadow lights (i actually saw a difference once I tried a different HDR image)

In regards to my setup, you pretty much guessed right it is quite simple (just an environment/ambient light combo)

Thank you guys for your help!