So glad I found this thread, it was really helpful. I was running into the artifacts with a fairly complex model with lots of subtools. The main problem though was rendering the shadow cast by my character’s hat, where the hat met the head. There was very bad artifacting, and I tried lots of different setups. Ultimately, I found that just turning Zmode off solved it, and everything seemed to render much better, and quicker! If anyone else is getting nasty artifacts in their shadows, I would recommend trying it, there was no loss of accuracy that I could notice, and everything actually looked better.
Also note, I wanted lengthy and fairly solid shadows, with some softness at the edges, more like Maya would deliver in rendering. So I had Zmode off, shadow length at 500, blur at 4, rays at 50, and aperture at 3. In the BPR shadow menu I had strength at 100, rays also at 50, and everything else default. I was using a 3 point light setup as well. Good luck!
great this one!!
<svg version=“1.1” baseProfile=“full” xmlns=“http://www.w3.org/2000/svg” style=“height: 0; width: 0; position: fixed”> <filter id=“bpm-darkle”> <feColorMatrix in=“SourceGraphic” type=“hueRotate” values=“180”></feColorMatrix> </filter> <filter id=“bpm-invert”> <feColorMatrix in=“SourceGraphic” type=“matrix” values=" -1 0 0 0 1 0 -1 0 0 1 0 0 -1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0"></feColorMatrix> </filter> </svg>The image is showing broken for me! 
me too, please fix if possible