Hi, it's me gain with probably a dumb question...

To achieve more real feel to my renders I usually use the Occlusion_Master wacro (from face_off) in my character. It's pretty nice, altough it takes like a month to render (specially near hair areas) but I was wondering something. The shadows that are reflected on my character skin are kinda sharp, and I kinda want a more smooth look. How do I do that?

I looked in the foruns but the answers were too complex or too empty, so I decided to post exactly what I wanted.

Thanks already!

Try this thread.

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2662514&

I didn't mean that, I mean Ambient occlusion shadows, not overall shadows... Like the different levels of smoothness in 4blueyes IBL Bright package (sharp, soft, softer)

What you can do is, in addition to what you're already doing with AO on the material (which is what OcclusionMaster does) you can also turn on full scene AO in one of your lights, or more than one; this will make AO shading happen in more than one way, both will stack.  You can have a softer, wider effect on the light that will overlap the stronger effect on the material, might be what you're looking for.

That's the opposite of what I'm doing.

I use occlusion master to avoid using AO in a light, my computer is not fancy eonough for that, and I just want thing to shadow over the main character, but in a soft way.

as an example: the hair of my actual render (where I'm using Occlusion master in a A3 character) projected a shadow of itself over Aiko's face. That's good, that's correct. But the shadow wich was projected was too sharp... I can't describe that without illustrating what I want...

Like when you put your hand between a lightspot and a wall; closer your hand get's to the wall, shaper the shadow appears; the closer your hand gets to the spotlight, the shadow projected gets smoother.

When you get into how shadow spreads, that's not much to do with AO, it has to do with shadow settings for your lights.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2730707&page=1

If you want more control and are willing to hook up more nodes, you can get it.

Add these two nodes - a Blender, and a Math:Bias.

The Blender:Blending value can be reduced to decrease the overall darkness of the AO. This is what AO:Strength should be doing, but AO:Strength does nothing at all. Blending=1 is the neutral value - no change.

The Math:Bias:Value_2 can be increased to soften the edges. Value_2=.5 is the neutral value - no change.

This render is at the neutral values - same as you'd get with AO node alone.

Thanks BagginBlill, i will certainly try out what you just explained...

Problably that's what was done in 4blueyes packege of Bright Lights...

After a lot of testing I found out what to do...

I apllyied the settings of the Light AO into the node, and it worked fantastic ^_^

Thanks for all your tipping!

Quote - Blending=.7, Bias=.5 - lighter.

can we also use here colors for AO? 

i know your old settings. but here you made it softer. could i make it red?