right side
left side
How do i prevent reflections of light through other objects. example: on right side, reflections of light inside barrel?!?! also on left side, reflection on stock holder thingy on the end?!?! those reflections obviously shouldn’t be there because the light should be blocked by the object in front of it. I’m using spot lights so i can get that realistic blurred shadow. when i use other light types, its ok. just the spot im having trouble with:mad:
You could turn down the bias, but honestly, enough people have never heard of area-lights, you’d think someone would’ve used them by now. 
Make an area-light and set it to face your gun (a track-to constraint works well) then make the light bigger, so it’s like a broad lighting square like used in photography, then increase the samples to a medium-to-reasonable amount (for a medium square, about 3-4 works well) and you’ll have a soft, raytraced, attenuated distance shadow.
it really does crank up a notch on the render time but fixes my problem. im just confused about what samples are for the ray shadow.
Yeah, it is unfortunate, but it’s what’s for dinner, and anyway, if you’re just running single-frame pictures, you should be good.
Samples… Ok. If the area light has 1 sample, it’s no better than a point light. If an area light has two samples, it’s 2x2 in a square, spaced evenly across the surface of the area light. It takes the 4 offset lights and blends between them. This is like a real-world light because no real light is a single instance in space, lightbulbs emit from a few inches across, etc. The more samples you have, the better-looking and more accurate the smooth lighting looks.