Hi there, I have some basic questions if people could enlighten me and suck I would appreciate it. IS imageBasedLighting and AO always the smae thing? You have to enable raytrace to get shadows with IBL? IBL AO is connected to subsurface scattering? Does IBL AO work on things without special node setup. etc etc Any basic advice, wisdom, hints or tops would be appreciated. My Firefly rendering skills are still pretty rough. Regards, Anton

PS: info about polygon smoothing would be awesom too. Lol

[[IS imageBasedLighting and AO always the smae thing?]]

No, you can have IBL without Ao and vise versa. Poser6 even includes lighting presets for IBL and IBL with AO.

{{IBL AO is connected to subsurface scattering?}}

No.

{{Does IBL AO work on things without special node setup.}}

Yes, it works just fine on a freshly loaded v3 with no textures or anything.

{{You have to enable raytrace to get shadows with IBL?}}

Hmmm... I don't think so, but I'm not sure.

Alric

Message edited on: 05/01/2005 03:11

So how do you get shadows without raytracing? I was unsuccessful

{{ So how do you get shadows without raytracing? I was unsuccessful}} Well I did say I wasn't sure on that one. :) I didn't do anything special so I probably had raytracing on (I usually do). It's too late tonight but I'll try and remember to take a look at it tomorrow. Alric

Regarding AO, I've found that the defualt AO strenght (0.7) usually produces a dirty, smudgy look to the figure. In most cases I've gotten better results by redusing the AO strength to around 0.3 Alric

Well, the late night spelling errors are out in force I see. : I read another interesting AO trick over in Runtime DNA's Poser6 board. AO isn't limited to lights, you can apply AO to materials as well. This can be used to create a dirt in the corners type effect.

Yeah I have been playing with that. Hadn't seen that post. Interesting

Two excellent P6FAQs with many answers. http://www.rdnaland.com/P6FAQ/ http://www.fnproductions.net/graphics/tutorials/poser6/index.php Mazak

a light with IBL will not cast shadows, as there is actually no point from which the light is coming from within 3d space, you will not get shadows, turning on AO on a lightsource will create shadows in areas where the rays cast from the light bounce of surfaces close together, the close the surfaces, the darker it becomes.

"a light with IBL will not cast shadows" Sure you can. You need to use raytrace shadows on a diffuse IBL light, but it works. AO is also raytraced, but you don't need to have AO enabled. Enable raytrace shadows, and it works based on the direction of the diffuse IBL light icon in world space.

Message edited on: 05/01/2005 06:00

Cool. I will have to play more tonight. Thanks for the info.

This (shadow issue) is very much related to a discussion I was having in an earlier thread, where the problem with casting depth map shadows (after deleting existing lights) was identified as being related to the fact that neither Poser 5 or Poser 6 default light sets include shadow cameras. It is indeed possible to render depth map shadows when using Diffuse IBL lighting (just like any other light?) if a shadow camera is present for the light. I'd love to hear some definitive clarification about whether the issue with Diffuse IBL being discussed here is specific to IBL, or is merely just another symptom of a more general problem that applies to all light sets without shadow cams. Surely after all this time CL must be aware that the default light sets in P5 are missing shadow cameras? If the ability to render depth map shadows is simply attainable by including shadow cameras with the light sets, then why have we all waiting so long for such a fix? Might there be more complex reasons why CL decided to (continue to) exclude shadow cams with the light sets in P6?

"It is indeed possible to render depth map shadows when using Diffuse IBL lighting (just like any other light?) if a shadow camera is present for the light." Yep, seems you're right about that, Caulbox. The solution is just to add your own light to the scene, change it to diffuse IBL, then add your IBL image to it in the material room manually. Then you can have shadow maps on that IBL with no AO.

The solution is just to add your own light to the scene, change it to diffuse IBL, then add your IBL image to it in the material room manually. Then you can have shadow maps on that IBL with no AO.

Alternatively you can load a default P6 light over-the-top (to replace) an existing light that already has a shadow camera attached, which permits the light to render with depth map shadows enabled.

Attached Link: AO based dirt shaders

AO is light position dependent. IBL is not IBL. So if you are using AO on an IBL light, you need to position that light correctly to get the right shadow look (eventhough that won't effect the IBL). I sitll haven't worked out the optimum AO light poition - but somewhere between the camera and the brightest light source seems a good starting point.

thanks!