I have read the tutorial, i have read the threads, but im still unshure of 2 things 1 shadows do you turn off just the the light shadows, or do you turn off the shadows on the body or props you are rendering. or is there a need to turn off any shadows? 2 if you have clothing or props conrorming to your figure or peranted, do you use OcclusionMaster on the figure or prop under the cloths or props or do you use the script on every thing, ie: vicki and a scarf do you run the script on vicki or on the scarf? or do you use the script on the scarf and vicki?

Paul (face_off) mentioned that he was going away for 2 weeks, and I don't think he's back yet, but maybe I can help a little... "1 shadows do you turn off just the the light shadows, or do you turn off the shadows on the body or props you are rendering. or is there a need to turn off any shadows?" There's shouldn't be any need to turn off shadows unless you think it looks better without them. Shadows on standard lights will not effect the AO from OcclusionMaster. You should NOT, however, use AO on a diffuse IBL light in your scene if you're going to be applying AO to your characters/props via OcclusionMaster. You can still use an IBL, but just turn off AO for it. Using both the AO from the light and OcclusionMaster would just be overkill on rendertime, and probably make your AO look like crap. "2 if you have clothing or props conrorming to your figure or peranted, do you use OcclusionMaster on the figure or prop under the cloths or props or do you use the script on every thing, ie: vicki and a scarf do you run the script on vicki or on the scarf? or do you use the script on the scarf and vicki?" You can do any combination you like, which is the benefit of using OcclusionMaster over just universal AO from a diffuse IBL. If you want the scarf to show AO on the character's neck and torso, for example, you can apply OcclusionMaster to the character, and not the scarf. So it really all depends on where you want the AO. I don't know yet if the final release of OcclusionMaster is the same as the beta version I had tried last month, but I'm sure it's very much the same thing... you select the character/object, run OM, and it brings up a python UI with all the body parts, and you just check off the ones you want to include.

thanks maxxxmodelz for taking the time to help me out, some of my results were not so hot and i was wondering if i had overlooked a simple solution, but i think it means ill have to play a little more to get the best reults

Cliss, following on from Max's comments... Light Shadows : I'm not absolutely sure I understand the question here. I personally only have normal shadows (depth mapped or ray traced) on for one or two of the lights in the scene - to get the major feature shadows, and use AO nodes for the detail shadows. Cloth/Props : Use the OcclusionMaster of the clothing/prop/figure that you want the shadow to appear on (not the object that casts the shadow). So if you have a bikini on V3 - the bikini would be casting very subtle shadows on V3's skin - so run the OcclusionMaster on V3, not the bikini. But if you have V3's hand touching the bikini - the bikini should have so shadowing from the hand - so in this case you would also run the OcclusionMaster on the bikini. A couple of things I've noticed.... 1) If you are not getting the results you want, render with Ray-Tracing OFF and compare the renders. That way you can see where AO is working well, and where it need more turning. 2) I've noticed very occationally, ray-tracing is not being turned on in P6 when the OcclusionMaster tells it to be on. So if in doubt, double-check that ray-tracing is on. 3) If the AO effect is not strong enough, it is generally because the two objects causing the occlusion are not close enough. For example, if the bikini is not occluding on V3's skin, you may need to either a) get the bikini closer to V3's skin, or b) increase the MaxDist of the occlusion nodes for V3's skin. Feel free to email me samples of your renders and I can coment further.