I notice that when I use shadows in POV-ray, they don't fade like real shadows would as the distance increases. Is there any way to make it do this? So that the further away the shadow is, the more unfocused it becomes?

I've wondered the same thing at times. I just use Photoshop of Paint Shop Pro to gradually fade and blur the shadows created as they lengthen away from the object.

I am guessing you are talking about "soft shadows". They can be achieve by replacing your one light with a number (say 10) of very dim lights that are very near each other but "jittered" (randomly placed relative to each other).

Richard

The jitter idea works sort of. I meant more that as the shadow lengthens farther from the object casting it, it gets weaker.

In Pov, you can make more realistic shadows, one's that will fade by changing your lighting. Area lights work very well, you can set the distance that that light begins deteriating making the shadow disappear as it gets longer, and weakens.... area lights have dozens of peramiters, BUT... make rendering very, very long, also, focal blur can help make it more realistic as well... hope this helped. There are alot of different lights, and many, many options to each of these lights. You really have to play with it some. you can get some really fantastic effects , just from lighting changes. In fact, I spend as much or more time configuring my lighting than the actual model.