Attached Link: http://tinyurl.com/d6jlc

I thought that some of the list might be intested in seeing what AO in C5 can do (warning - NUDITY). The linked image took 3 hours 18 min on a dual processor machine (Athlon MP 2000+) to render at 960x1200. The AO option in C5 really speeds things up, I started the same image with true ray tracing, but canceled it after about 3.5 hours, as it still had about 4.5 hours to go. I had all the render options turned up pretty high (not the "best", all one setting below the best). I was just "playing" with the demo to get a feel for C5 with Poser imports and AO (MUCH easier to use than in P6). I used Transposer to import, as it seems to do a better job with trans maps than the native import. I wanted to test out the import of Poser "buildings" with figures, which worked quite well. I usually use my own content, but I was just testing ,so I went the easy route. I also don't normally do nudes, but was in a rush to test things, so the top was an extra step I didn't take. I liked the results, and thought others might like to see what the AO in C5 can do.

What exactly is AO supposed to accomplish? Ever confused, ED

Ambient Occlusion reduces light accumulation where shapes meet. Think of a plate sitting on a table - the plate shadows the table in greater amounts the closer you get to the where the plate touches because more and more light is blocked.

Ambient Occlusion fakes that effect without doing the actual math involved in raytracing the the light. So it's not as accurate as "real" indirect lighting but is a great alternative sometimes. Using AO has been a trick of animation houses for some time since it is significantly faster to render over multiple frames than actual global types of illumination.

Carrara's implementation of AO is really nice since it doesn't require rendering multiple files with G-buffers and then compositing them afterwards - everything is already completed in the final rendered image.

Mark

Message edited on: 02/09/2006 12:23

Thanks Mark! I am now enlightened! (It will wear off soon ;-)