What is Three Point Lighting

Q: What's "Three point lighting"?

A: It's a lighting setup that uses a light as a key light or your main source of light. Another for a fill light, you know, the light that illuminates the spots where the key light doesn't hit, to eliminate pitch black areas and simulate ambient or indirect illumination. And a rim light that is placed more in the back of the subject to create an outline that accents the subject's contours. Some artists approach creating the rim light effect using materials instead of lights! Three point lighting doesn't necessarily describe the number of lights involved but rather the aspects of the scene the lights illuminate.

Grainy Shadows

Q: Why are my raytraced shadows so grainy?

A: The sampling is too low. Increase the shadows rays on the light[s], same goes for its "Area Light" high samples of the Mental Ray section if you checked it on, when this is on, the shadow rays attribute doesn't have an effect. These attributes in addition to the anti-aliasing in the render settings can eliminate grain at the cost of render speed so being careless with sampling can make you want to drop kick your machine.

Note: This assumes that Mental Ray is your renderer but the light or shadow sampling settings are pretty universal when it concerns grainy shadows.