So I have been trying to create a material for myself that is basically a straw roof or reed roof. I made displacement and everything works fine, except the shadows.
I have made sure I have enough subdivisions and everything for it to render, is there a way to make the shadows more soft in the material itself or do i HAVE to mess around with the light source?
I would prefer to do it in material but would also be fine with messing with the light to accomplish this.
Thank you in advance!
Perhaps try reducing the displacement scale. If the results are not appealing, you might have to increase the light size to increase softness of the shadows.
What is the lighting? For a roof I’d expect there to be both sunlight and a sky to fill in the shadows. Black shadows indicate no sky.
As for material, I think you have limited options since the produced height doesn’t effect coordinate readout. You’d have to use the height data itself, maybe to affect shadow rays only to soften them up. I would have to experiment, probably unsuccessfully, with the nodes you’re already using, if procedural. Texture (less options) if texture based.
Maybe hair would be a better attempt? I don’t know.
I don’t know how to utilize hair well enough for that, maybe though. Also it is not procedually generated, just a texture based one. The lighting source is just a little sun i plopped from the add menu.
Before thinking about hair, are your displacement settings correct ?
There are several ways to obtain displacement and so, several ways to make mistakes.
So, first thing, first.
How did you set up displacement in material ? what node did you use ? what option did you choose in displacement panel ?
If your set-up implies influence of map on Bump, that is logical to obtain such shadows.
I have it set to displacement only. The way I get displacement is (image texture) with a height map then it goes in to a displacement node and then it goes in to the final output.
I would also try @CarlG’s suggestion, and add a sky to the World. Download an HDRI, or use the Noise texture and Color Ramp (blue to white). Play with scale in the Noise, and slider positions in the Color Ramp to get a simple sky with clouds.
Adding an HDRI actually solved the issue, thank you very much yall!
With a sun only and no sky, that’s how it would look like on the moon, more or less 
