dasquid opened this issue on Jan 27, 2009 · 68 posts
bagginsbill posted Tue, 27 January 2009 at 7:11 PM
The key to great lighting is Gamma Correction.
The key to great AO may still be material-based AO.
But - Poser 7 SR3 and Poser Pro have improved the light-based AO a lot. But still not as good as material-based. If you have not installed Poser 7 Service Release 3 (SR3) then I'm going to stop you right there. Either install SR3, or don't do light-based AO.
With light-based the good news is you only have one set of parameters to adjust. The bad news is you only have one set of parameters to adjust. No that's not a typo.
If you can find settings that work for every item in your scene, light-based is better/easier as there is less to adjust. However, you can get into situations where one scene area demands that you increase a parameter to get it to look right, and another scene area demands that you decrease that same parameter to get it to look right. When you hit one of these contradicting requirements, your only recourse is to abandon the light-based AO.
The black spots (artifacts) are almost always an indication that you need to increase the bias on the AO. However, before you go raising it to a really high number, understand that it will prevent AO from appearing in any geometric feature that is smaller than the bias.
So if you set the bias to .5 inches, then the nostrils, which are less than that, will no longer experience AO, and you will get "nostril glow". Small crevices, like the armpit crease, will lose the AO in the deepest part, but suddenly just outside, it will turn on.
These are the situations you end up in. Raising bias to remove spots, lowering bias to reach into tiny creases.
I'm still not certain that light-based AO actually performs as well as material based. Last couple days, I had a situation where I could not get the AO shadow to look right in a crease.
Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)