I thought I'd do a comparitive render using ambient occlusion.

The AO image was created by adding an ao node to the face and body texture of aiko, and turning ao for the main white light.

So what do you think? I'm having a hard time deciding if I like it or not, especially since it took less than half the time to render the normal one. And the odd black smudge on her shoulder is annoying.

Then again I'm not completely sure I've set up ao as it was intended to be :)

Take care

John.

Maybe it's just my eyes, but I see almost no difference--certainly wouldn't be worth the extra render time to me.

Am I just not with it? I only see a lower contrast on left and higher on right (plus the black facet on left). If anything, the fill light seems to be working better on right. What is going on? I thought I had descent visual perception although I do need a new glasses perscription for my birthday next week ;)

As I mentioned I may have not set it up right :) but the differences I can see are around the eyes, the iris's look darker for one, and the neck and chest are darker too. The neck bothers me a bit, the shadow looks really dirty, if that makes sense. Ther render settings are one below final in P6 talk. Back to the manual I guess :) John

Left with OA, I noticed very little of soft shadow. Her eyes got caught in shadow. I am not sure if you want it that way. The image really do not show the differences.

No big difference on my monitor, either. The AO is slightly worse, due to various artifacts.

"The AO image was created by adding an ao node to the face and body texture of aiko" The purpose of AO is to produce "soft shadows", but your lighting in that scene does not compliment the use of it. You should try using IBL (image based lighting) on the light with AO. I dont think you have that light set as a diffuse IBL. Also, you can play with AO strength and (in the AO scene options for your light) try lowering the max distance a bit, while increasing samples slightly to get rid of artifacting.

This scene is not even close to being set up right for AO read your manual/tutes and check your settings.

I'm still playing with the settings, but here's some early tests... All images use 2 lights - Primary light is set up at 60% intensity, IBL, Depth map shadows and (in all but first image) AO. Secondary light is set up at 55% intensity, infinite, no shadows...

Ooops, I forgot one of the settings... Ambient Occlusion Strength - was lowered from (default) .7 to .45, to lighten up the shading.

Observation... raising the Bias in the 3rd image probably hurt the shading around her right breast, where it meets the corset top. I think I can play with that value to make it more like image #2.

Did you use IBL AO and diable all other shadows?

Note to John... "The AO image was created by adding an ao node to the face and body texture of aiko, and turning ao for the main white light." As mentioned by others above, you should use an IBL light and also, there's no need to add AO nodes to the materials. Just enable it on the light and it's calculated for the entire scene.

"Did you use IBL AO and diable all other shadows?" My first post (post #9) describes the lighting used.

I agree that the teeth in particular suffer in the 2nd pic. I would almost be tempted to render both and then bring them into photoshop for a little "best of both worlds" merging. =) Really really cool to see this experimentation, thanks to you both!!

Yeah the AO node, if is used for something else like fractal shadow, it is called "Nasty Shadow" because they did not use it with direct light interaction. Many members argued against my term because they thought the AO node would work the same with true AO. However the AO node may be used as true AO if you know how to use it with light settings and the light nodes. It may be renderer time saving. I still have not received my P6 box and am waiting to play with it.

Spanki I just read your #9

"I agree that the teeth in particular suffer in the 2nd pic. I would almost be tempted to render both and then bring them into photoshop for a little "best of both worlds" merging. =)"

In P6, you have the option to render a scene as "shadows only". So, in essence, what you can do is... render the scene one time without AO enabled (all your lights, including diffuse IBL should be on). This pass should render VERY quckly because there's no shadows. Save the image. Then instead of rendering the scene again with AO, you can turn on AO, and just render a shadow pass. This will be an all-white image, save for the darkened areas where shadows are. Then you bring both images into Photoshop, put the shadow pass image above the color image layer, and set the shadow layer to "multiply". Then your shadows are composited over your color layer.

To remove parts of shadows from the scene (like on the teeth for example), simply use the eraser tool on the shadow layer to remove whatever parts you want without affecting the overall effect. Message edited on: 03/26/2005 14:06

If you like one of the shadows but not the teeth. I would add very little glow or ambient to the teeth. Hollywood have special teeth rembrandt for actors/actress for movie. In real life people have darker teeth.

Transmapped hair confuses the AO calculation (Imagine tring figue how all the layers interact with each other). Try using strand hair. It seems to go faster.

AO is also more for brightly lit scenes, ones where there would not be clear shadows or scenes using IBL.

You don't need to add an AO shader to every material in the scene. Only add one if you want to over ride the scene level AO settings for that material.

Nerd3D P.S. 3 lights all with AO on and shadows off. Stock AO settings except 5 samples

Message edited on: 03/26/2005 14:16

But.. adding a very little glow or ambient to the teeth is called "Fake Teeth", because it does not use the proper settings and some people think it does, like True Teeth. [the rest of us get to make up terms too, right? ;)]

Thanks Nerd... I was using Depth Map shadows, because I hadn't yet figured out how to do the new softer ray-traced shadows (just adjusting the shadow density seems to have zero effect, for example). I'll look into that next.

"Try using strand hair"

The problem with strand-based hair is that it LOOKS like... strand-based hair ;).

Message edited on: 03/26/2005 14:23

Spanki, "the rest of us get to make up terms too, right?" Right LOL :) GWeb

Thanks Spanki, I actually prefer the second render for some reason? But anyway, the test you did reall shows the difference in the left hand... gets rid of that "pasted on" look where meshes meet.

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John, "the only difference being ao turned on on the left one" Which AO were you talking about the node or the renderer? In my opinion the shadow in left kinda look dirt more like artifating. Is there a way you could soften the shadow? GWeb

It looks good -- however, it also appears the shadow bias settings are somewhat off -- assuming the program operates in a manner similar to the source for the rendering engine.

Getting there John... to try to soften things up a bit, try either reducing the intensity of the IBL or reducing the 'Ambient Occlusion Strength', or both. If you want the character to be so brightly lit, try just adjusting the Ambient Occlusion Strength (it defaults to like 0.7, try loering that to 0.25 or somewhere inbetween), though I would at least tone down the light intensity a bit as well (maybe 80-90% instead of 100%).

What causes the light "streak" where her upper left arm intersects the side of her chest below her armpit? (Her left arm, to viewer's right.) That should be even darker.

Hey GWeb I didnt try it because of time factors but I'm told you can remove the dirt type effect by upping the sample rate, I left it at defauat, which is 3. I did up the strength level a bit too, reducing that would have softened the shadows too. I'm still experimenting :) Nerds post at 26 shows it off really well I think. John.

Im not sure vp, I'm guessing thorugh that since ao works on lowering the ambient light when objects are close to each other, that part of the arm may be just out of range, so the light is not reduced. I hope that makes sense to someone other than me :) John

which figure and clothes is that Tucan-Tiki? He looks nice? Is it James? Love esther

Fugazi1968 I think the shadows come out a little too dark on the AO image, but it does show the effect. I don't recognise the figure but it does look to have the usual Poser joint problems, especially its left arm; wrist, elbow, and shoulder. The AO version makes the effects more obvious. My experience is that P5 can get close to most of the AO images in this thread, with a little careful adjustment of the lighting. But I'm wondering how many people have yet got a feel for the P6 improvements. Tucan-Tiki There's something about that guy's neck that's creepy.