How do I maintain current lighting, but get softer, lighter shadows?

[Raven]

Just about to render finals on a job, and client who has approved everything suddenly wants softer, lighter shadows. But everything else needs to remain the same.
I cant just up the size of the planes as that will change lighting, spec and reflections completely.
The objects are also pretty close to the floor so it would need to be pretty extreme to soften the shadows.
Any ideas, am I missing something... ...other than a reasonable client.

Thanks
Gavin

[RockinAkin]

You can switch your light's intensity units to Radient Power (W), and increase the size of your lights without it's overall intensity increasing as well. But as you noted - the Reflections and Speculars will change as well.

If that's no good, then i guess your other option is render out a separate shadow pass and mess with it in post.

[Neilg]

hm. Duplicate your lights, switch off 'affect diffuse' in one set. on the other, switch off affect reflections/spec - do the radient power/size increase said above.

for lighter shadows just render out a raw light/shadow pass and use that as a mask in photoshop.

[Raven]

Thanks guys will give those a try.
Have already done the duplicate light setup to control the shadow intensity. Will see about using it to soften as well.

[Morbid Angel]

If you wish to maintain your lighting as constant, you can choose no decay option, then you must re-balance your lighting for the new intensity, after which you can scale your lights to produce softer shadow without affecting their intensity.