CompuServe Messages

Tutorial #13 and the Shadow Parameters section in the Reference book give you a detailed description of what the buttons do. Once you understand that, you should make a simple scene with a single shadow-casting light and experiment. A preview window wouldn't work because the effects are all scene-dependant, and it would take just as long to do that as to render a region of the screen. If you best shadow you're getting is still heavily aliased, then your map res isn't high enough, your light is too far from your scene, or the light's falloff cone is too wide.