Attached Link: http://plugins.angstraum.at/vrayao/index.htm

See the link for an example of an ambient occlusion script for 3dsmax, and follow some of the links there to see what ambient occlusion is. I'm wondering if there might be something out there to do the same thing in Poser. Obviously, we wouldn't be rendering a true GI pass from within Poser (maybe in P6), but you could still set up a fake GI light rig and do basically the same thing. The benefit being, when you render the occlusion (GI) pass, it would render much faster, since there would be NO complex materials or heavy textures on any of the objects in the scene. Then, even for animation, all you do is composite the occlusion layer over the color render, and set it to "multiply", so that only the soft shadows blend with the color pass seamlessly. So what I'm looking for is a python script that could automatically change ALL the materials on every figure, prop, and hair object in the scene (including the ground plane) to a base white material with no specularity all at once. Is there something out there for this already, or.... ?

According to the email I just got from CL, P6 will have ambient occlusion.

"According to the email I just got from CL, P6 will have ambient occlusion." Ah, that's good to hear! Would still be nice for the time being if there were a python script to help automate the process in P5. I'm speculating that P6 will be geared toward a much more useful post-processing output capability. Features like "shadowcatcher" and "ambient occlusion" seem to indicate we'll be seeing a much richer feature set for compositing and video post.

If you want everything white/black/black/black, with no texture maps, here's a simple script. Note that this doesn't keep an "undo", so you'll need to save the original setup before using it.

Ockham to the rescue! ;-) Just wondering, will this script work with P5? I should have mentioned that in the original post.

It will work on the basic colors in P5; won't do anything at all to the nodes, though.

Ok, well that's still useful. It would be ideal if there could be a script compiled that would take all the existing texture nodes that may be in the material room, remove them all, then apply the base white color. It's simple enough to just apply a previously saved white material to individual body parts on a figure via the material room, but it would be so much more efficient and time-saving to have a script that can do it all at once on every figure in the scene, including all props, etc. Even if it didn't have "undo", it would be the most functional solution for doing an ambient occlusion pass on a scene without having to manually go to every individual prop or body part and changing the material. Is that possible, Ockham?

Perhaps I'm mistaken, and this does do just that. I'll have to runa test and see.

I think you should catch the attention of Face_off on this subject. He's been writing node-altering scripts. This will certainly require the script to load a 'dummy' PZ2 or PZ3 to get rid of nodes.

Good advice, Ockham. Thanks for your help! Face_off, if you see this, tell me what you think.

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What are you doing with the all-white material render? Combining it with the full color render in Photoshop or something? Anyway - yes, this could all be done, however it wouldn't be a simple script to write (although check the python forum - someone has written a script to extract a mat pose from a saved pz3 scene - that would be a start). Isn't it tempting to wait for P6 on this one?

"What are you doing with the all-white material render? Combining it with the full color render in Photoshop or something?" Yeah. Ambient Occlusion, as it's called, is a widely known technique in 3D animation, because it allows you to basically render a seperate "GI" pass much more quickly than you can do under normal circumstances, and gives you more control. You'd need Photoshop or, in the case of video, AfterEffects or Combustion to composite the results together. Basically, you start by rendering a scene with full textures on all the objects with NO shadows (which renders very quickly. Then, you'd remove all the texture nodes completely, and set all the objects to a plain white material with no specularity. This time you render it with a global light setup, with shadows on every light to get a GI effect (soft ambient shadows) going on. Since you aren't loading any high resolution textures or materials to the renderer, it renders much faster per frame. Finally, you bring the full color layer you rendered with no shadows, and the all-white occlusion layer with soft GI-like shadows into a post FX editor, and multiply the occlusion layer over the color layer. This basically makes it so only the shadow areas get composited on top of the color render. You can also render a seperate layer with just your key light. This also gives you a little more control over the final shadow/light/color elements of your scene when you touch things up in post, being that they will all be on seperate layers. As it is right now, doing this in P5 is too much of a hassle, because it means manually having to change all the materials on everything in the scene one by one. Not very efficient at all. "Isn't it tempting to wait for P6 on this one?" Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to wait on it. I posted this before I even knew P6 would have an ambient occlusion option built-in. Thanks anyway for responding.

was about to post a question here about staying bw, but decided to start new thread instead about noir animation... ::::: Opera :::::

There are some scripts over at maleposer.com that might do what you're looking for. I think they were originally for clearing node buildup but they might be useful for this as well. David

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/photos/MSG2/Message2080040.txt

This very cool script by Geoff Hicks might be what you're looking for. I use it all the time to set all the materials in a scene to a single material and shader tree. It's not real fast, but it's very robust.

Great tips there, guys. Much appreciated. Thanks. :-)