hey pooks 😭 sorry if this is a repetitive question or if i'm bothering u. i was wondering if u have any tips or tricks for making the shadows look less harsh in blender. i've been trying to get better at it, but i'm never really happy with how sharp the shadows end up looking. i noticed that in your renders the lighting and shadows look a lot softer more like dreamy and smooth and i was wondering if there's anything specific u do to achieve that. thanks in advance!! 🫶
Hiii, so I can only speak on rendering in Cycles, so that's what I'll speak on.
Some things to play around with would be the radius or sizes of your lights. The smaller the light, the harsher/sharper the shadows. If you want softer shadows, up the radius of your point light or make an area light larger. If you're using a Sun light, increase the angle of it in settings.
I also recommend playing Compositor settings, adding a Glare > Fog Glow node can really emulate that dreamy effect you're looking to achieve.
Color Management modes can also impact the contrast of your photo, which make shadows appear lighter/darker. If you're looking for lighter shadows, you may lean towards Filmic more. I lean more towards AGX because I like my photos having more of a moody contrast.
I also paint some shadows in Procreate after by color picking the Sim's skin (darkest part) and putting the layer on Multiply, Gaussian Blur what you've drawn, smudge out with Blend tool if needed, then lower opacity.
Lastly, when editing, to also get the dreamy, soft look, duplicating your image and gaussian blurring it and adding different layer blend modes to the blurred layer can really add to the overall image. I usually like to use Overlay and Screen (or Add) on lower opacity. This makes everything smoothed out too.
Hopes this helps! Please let me know if you want me to extrapolate on anything.