G'day Derek, welcome aboard!
I'll answer your second question first, as it has a definate answer! To create soft shadows on your renders, there are a couple of things you can do:
1 Change the light type to "Area" in the light properties panel. Use the Size tool to enlarge the light (the bigger you make the light, the softer the shadows get!) You may need to increase the light Quality in light properties and tick Shadow Noise Reduction in the Global Illumination panel as well to retain quality. Be aware that Area lights can give you very realistic lighting, but render times will suffer.
2 Change the light type to "Spotlight" in the light properties panel. Select the shadow tab and set "shadow type" to "shadow map". You can then adjust the fuziness setting to soften the edges of your shadows. To increase the quality of your shadows, enter values that are multiples of 512. Shadow maps don't require Ray-Tracing so render quickly (don't forget to turn off Ray-Traced Shadows in Render Options!
Just noticed that Bullet_Evader snuck in with a reply! Yeah! That's one possibility! If you hit the Automatic Sizing button in the texture editor, it will resize the image to that surface's geometry and check the texture axis like Bullet' said. It's a tricky one without seenig exactly what you're doing and the images you are using! Good luck!
Cheers! priimate.
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