Raytrace Shadow Troubles

Hy, I am looking for a simple solution, which I couldn’t solve by myself:

I want a productbox on a transparent floor,
displaying a soft mirroring in the front and a soft shadow in the back.

I achieved a good enough result for my usage with the mirroring and the box, but I can’t get the shadow “soft”. The option I used for the “floor” only recieve shadows always, to get the whole thing without floor, makes a hard and black shadow, with raytracing and buffer shadows. I made several spots for lightning only and one for the shadow. I tried all things I found here but nothing helped.

I read the web and the forum for very long now (don’t wanna tell you how long - you would name me too stupid:o) so I hope anybody could give me a hint how to solve my easy task.

best regards
Antonio

Attachments


A raytracing area light with about 9 samples creates a really nice soft shadow.

Indeed, the shadow got softer, but I still can’t get it “lighter”.

Have you had a look at Ambient Occlusion? (FYI people generally call it “AO”,
just so you know that, if/when somebody mention it in the future).

http://creationanimation.com/sites/thoenes/animation/3dtutorials/blender-rendertests/Blender-Ambient-occlusion-tests.html
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartVI/Ambient_Occlusion

It will lighten up your shadow, as well as adding a well needed touch of realism
to your product box…it will lengthen your rendertimes greatly though.
//The M.h.p.e.

The effect is quite awesome,
the only problem is, it always made my shadow to light.
No matter what I values I used.
I will try this one later on when I have more time.
For right now I will use the box with the normal raytrace shadow.

But I will use AO in further “projects”

Thank you for helping!
Antonio