It has been mentioned to improve shadows etc I should turn AO on for a particular body part or prop.

How do I do this? I have never used AO & can only find it on the light settings. I cannot find it on any body parts or props.

So how do I "turn it on" in these areas?

Thanks

You would do it in the Texture Settings in Poser 6 & 7.  ;)

edit  To make it easy, they've included a macro to automatically put the nodes in an optimal position, so all you have to do is play with the settings ;)

AO can do horrible things to the render time though :$  Looks good when it finally finishes mind

The OcclusionMaster vendor page here at Rendo has a good tutorial:
http://www.physicalc-software.com/tutorials/ao/ 
note that this tutorial does NOT require OcclusionMaster, but it is a very useful time-saving tool, especially when you want to mess around with AO for multiple figures in a scene!

I used to worry about render time and fiddle with AO settings but I got tired of hearing that my shadows looked like dirt.  I set Irradiance Caching to 99 and don't worry about it any more.

Check out this information. You may find it helpful.

http://www.contentparadise.com/forums/contentparadise/index.php?showtopic=3670&hl=occlusion

On the same topic, if you use AO with a light, does this make using AO on a material redundant in the same scene?

Usually yes. It depends if the light is not directly illuminating the object. 

You could use nodes in areas that are within shadow for additional shading.

They do different things in the same general way.  Putting AO on one or more lights, as I understand it, will apply AO to everything within the scene, with the parameters you set for that light.  Setting AO by material zone will only apply it to those materials you take that step for, and nothing else.  I actually do both, which may or may not be a good idea, but I'm generally happy with my results.

edit: ... like Anton says :)

The skin I used, comes with AO.....

Then you are most of the way there!  :)  I think what is missing is to render at high enough quality so that Raytracing is enabled if you are using auto settings, or switch to Manual settings and simply check the box "Use Raytracing".  I usually use 4-5 bounces, but a lot of people think 2 is OK.  Be aware that with those settings, anything within 7 and 3/4 inches (Poser inches) will start making an Ambient Occlusion shadow, which may be a bit too much.

From Paul Kinnane's tutorial above:

Recommended Initial Settings

These settings are for when your Poser 6 preferences have the display units set to INCHES.

• Eyewhite – max dist = 1, RayBias = 0.01

• Skin – max dist = 3, RayBias = 0.4 (if the skin uses a displacement map, or the joints are severely bent, you will need to increase this to 0.5-0.6 to get rid of artifacts)

• Clothing, wall, etc – max dist 5-50, RayBias = 0.5

Rendering with the AO node

Firstly, you MUST have ray-tracing on in your render settings (2 bounces is fine), and be using the FireFly renderer.

Shadows : You can use the AO in place of other scene shadowing, or in conjunction with traditional light shadowing or AO. For example, if you are doing a portrait render, you can switch off shadows, and have AO nodes on the eyewhite, nostrils and lips to get realistic shadowing. Or you can switch on shadows for one or more of the lights, and have them working together with the AO nodes.

Hair : It is not recommended to use AO nodes on hair. Also, I suggest unchecking the Visible in Ray Tracing check-box for any hair figures or props in the scene, since including hair in AO calculations takes a very long time. Use traditional depth mapped shadows for hair shadowing.

Light based AO : You can use light based AO together with AO nodes on materials, however it is recommended that you make the RayBias of the light AO approximately the same of the largest MaxDist you are using on an AO node on a material. This should ensure that the light and materials Ambient Occlusion doesn’t double-up.

One other handy note, AO is a very easy way to kill most nostril glow (apply AO to the Nostrils material group).

Hmmmm.... What bodypart is selected in the Materials window?  The top of that window is cut off.  

I am fairly sure the pearl necklace also needs to have the "Visible in Raytracing" option enabled in the Pose Room -> Parameter Dials window -> Properties tab.  If it's not, it will make depthmap shadows fine but won't be ... visible in raytracing :)

Quote - Hmmmm.... What bodypart is selected in the Materials window?  The top of that window is cut off. 

It was the neck.

Quote - I am fairly sure the pearl necklace also needs to have the "Visible in Raytracing" option enabled in the Pose Room -> Parameter Dials window -> Properties tab.  If it's not, it will make depthmap shadows fine but won't be ... visible in raytracing :)

It was LOL

Hmmmm :(

Just to do some basic problem determination, could you try just a default scene with default V4, with the V4 basic materials, no hair or clothing and...

1. go to Materials room
2. select the Chest materials group
3. on the right, hit the "Apply Ambient Occlusion" wacro button
4. pose the character with something touching the chest eg. her hand or some small primitive prop with default materials, or really any damn thing
5. set one or more lights to make some shadow across the figure where the crack between chest and (whatever) doesn't have bright light shining straight into it
6. render at same settings above 

I'd just like to see if you can get it to do anything at all.

The is the old position...

Thanks for the help though.

Oh, since you are going to re-render anyhow, you might try AO on the Nostrils material group (default settings should be OK) and Smooth Polygons to ease up the shoulders.

Quote - Oh, since you are going to re-render anyhow, you might try AO on the Nostrils material group (default settings should be OK) and Smooth Polygons to ease up the shoulders.

AO was already on for the notrils, but I will try it again with smooth polygons to see how it goes.

Thanks

Cool :)  Best of luck!  I look forward to the result!

http://www.physicalc-software.com/tutorials/ao/

In those images at the above link that show examples of with and without AO, exactly what improvements am I looking to see?  TBH with the exception of no shadows in the "without" image, I don't see any difference in the quality of the render.  To me the "without" looks like it was rendered without shadows, and the "with" with cast shadows on.

It is most obvious in the dog tags necklace render, and that's the kind of thing I typically suggest it for.  To me it's a very big difference, but opinions vary.