Troubleshoot raytraced shadow artifacts

User Guide > Rendering and Render Setup > Lighting > mental ray for Maya Lighting > Troubleshoot mental ray for Maya shadows >

When using a coarse approximation of an object and imitating a smooth surface (by bending normals away from the geometry normal) you may find shadow artifacts.

To correct this try the following:

Use fine approximation to fit the surface more precisely (see Approximation styles)
Disable Casts Shadows for the object to avoid self-shadowing (see Render Stats)
Use a separate shadow casting object to cast shadows onto other objects
Adjust the Ray Offset attribute on a per-object basis (see Dynamic Attributes for Rendering)
Use shadow maps with a Bias instead of raytraced shadows, if possible (see Shadow Map Attributes)