Sharp shadows in a Studio Lighting Setup with softbox Area lights?

[matto.schmidt]

I have a studio lighting setup with soft lighting but I need some elements to cast strong sharp shadows? How is this accomplished? With an ordinary Maya spot light? I tried adjusting the spread on the Area lights but it did not help.

Adding a Maya spot to get shadows seems like a hacky approach?

[madsd]

Set the Arnold area light to 0 spread, that would give you razor sharp shadow.

[ramon.montoya · Accepted solution]

As Mads said, you can control the softness of the shadows with spread, see here to see how that works: https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Quad+Light#QuadLight-Spread

Also, the size of the lighting elements increases the softness of the shadows, so making them smaller will give you harder shadows.

For spotlights, you can control the hardness of the shadows with the radius parameter