I have been working on this render since last night. I decided to try to learn how to use the AO lights that are in Poser and I like some of the results but not others. The first time I rendered this there was a dark black outline around her and even around the brow transparency making it completely visible. the second render after turning down the AO on the light, there are very strange dark marks under her right elbow, across her right collarbone/shoulder area and her left elbow and hand.

(also if anyone could help me out with making her eyebrows look better I would appreciate that too, Im trying to use transmapped brows since the texture actually doesnt have those damned painted on brows lol)

I am not sure what the settings were on the first render but on the second render the AO strength was 0.570001 and the light type was a diffuse IBL with no shadows.

Before anyone makes fun of me and says LOL Yer doin it wrong, I'm asking because I don't know how lol. anyway the second render (posted in this post) got rid of the crap under her elbow but leaves some at her shoulder area and her left elbow and hand.

Hey, dasquid. Do you have a screenshot of your light settings?

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just the AO light?

Well, actually, how many lights do you have in your scene?

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Light based AO is too much a "one size fits all" type of solution - which almost never works.
You're better off with material based AO. For example, you DON"T want AO on those transmapped eyebrows, but you DO want it on the stones of that flor, and probably on the skin of her body.
The AO strength on materials should be set about 10 times as high as on lights to get a comparable effect, that's some weirdness that's built into Poser.
You'll also want some shadow and some specular effects.
IBL is great for setting the overall lighting of your scene, but you need additional lights for specular effects and shadows. This looks like an outdoor scene, so I'd suggest adding an infinite light for "sunlight" and shadows, toning down the IBL light strength a little, and maybe an extra light with Diffuse color set to black, Specular to white, no shadows, to bring out some extra speculars.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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Quote - Well, actually, how many lights do you have in your scene?

Just 2 lights one the sunlight which is a large spotlight casting shadows and the IBL light that has the AO turned on

Quote - Light based AO is too much a "one size fits all" type of solution - which almost never works.
You're better off with material based AO. For example, you DON"T want AO on those transmapped eyebrows, but you DO want it on the stones of that flor, and probably on the skin of her body.
The AO strength on materials should be set about 10 times as high as on lights to get a comparable effect, that's some weirdness that's built into Poser.
You'll also want some shadow and some specular effects.
IBL is great for setting the overall lighting of your scene, but you need additional lights for specular effects and shadows. This looks like an outdoor scene, so I'd suggest adding an infinite light for "sunlight" and shadows, toning down the IBL light strength a little, and maybe an extra light with Diffuse color set to black, Specular to white, no shadows, to bring out some extra speculars.

Material based AO? thats in the material room on the right? lol I can use all the help I can get with lights I can get good lights and shadows sometimes but then other times it takes me longer to do the lights than it does to get the scene built.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2717720

BagginsBill has a great in-forum discusion on AO in this thread. I usually end up using the material-based AO over the light-based, it usually comes out nicer, in my experiencs. Though, YMMV. ;)

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Thanks for the link Ill have a look at it but Ill ask questions here since that thread is two years old.

No probs :)

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Actually BB reversed himself on the material-based AO issue based on trials using PoserPro. Another post in the forum suggests stripping out the VSS Prop of all AO nodes and going with the light-based AO renders.

But I do agree with svdl, the key to a great scene is lighting. Even using minimal setup, you can render the most spectacular images imaginable.

Quote - Actually BB reversed himself on the material-based AO issue based on trials using PoserPro. Another post in the forum suggests stripping out the VSS Prop of all AO nodes and going with the light-based AO renders.

But I do agree with svdl, the key to a great scene is lighting. Even using minimal setup, you can render the most spectacular images imaginable.

Im not sure what Vss is and is that reversal only in poser pro? because I am using Poser 7

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.

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Your first problem is your IBL is too even. There is too much light coming from below.

What image are you using to control the lighting in your IBL?

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Quote - Your first problem is your IBL is too even. There is too much light coming from below.

What image are you using to control the lighting in your IBL?

Hmm my version of poser 7 is 7.0.2.127 I'm assuming that that is Sp2 then?

and the best AO is lighting based but only with SP3?

The best AO is material based in all versions.

Prior to SP3, light-based AO was so inferior as to be unusable.

It is now better than it used to be, but I'm not certain its the equal to material-based AO.

In any case, if you find there is no value for the bias that works for your whole scene, then it has to be material-based AO.

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You didn't show me the IBL image you're using. What I'm saying is you need one like this. In fact, try this.

The amount of light from the sky is like 10 times what comes bouncing up from the ground.

If you're doing an outdoor daylight render, this is the type of image you need to use.

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> Quote - You didn't show me the IBL image you're using. What I'm saying is you need one like this. In fact, try this. > > The amount of light from the sky is like 10 times what comes bouncing up from the ground. > > If you're doing an outdoor daylight render, this is the type of image you need to use.

Sorry I forgot i am trying to figure out all this stuff and I keep getting distracted and losing my place lol. but this is the one I used and if i had looked closer i would never have used it since it seems that all the outdoor ones i have have friggin cars in them even if you cant see them in the thumbnails.

Edit: sec damned thing is too big got to shrink it a bit.

here we go

Well it doesn't matter that there's a car in it. I could put my face in it and you'd not notice it. The details don't matter. It's the broad swaths of color and luminance that matters. This image controls diffuse reflection only, so that means that hundreds of points contribute to the illumination from any given direction. Effectively, the image is blurred beyond all recognition of details like tree branches or cars or street signs.

What does matter is that whoever made that doesn't understand the angular map format. First of all, a mirror ball is not the right format. A mirror ball, unless shot from infinitly far away, doesn't include much information from behind the ball.

Second, it was shot while looking down. As a result, a good part of that image showing the sky is actually being used to illuminate the subject from underneath and in front of the figure. Imagine I took a big light and put it in front of you on the ground and shined it up into your face. Equivalent to all the light that is just above the car. That's what is happening here.

The third thing that's wrong with it is it is a normally colored photo. Which means the color information is recorded to look like real life when viewed on your computer screen. This is the sRGB color space, and it inflates illumination intensities. A properly made IBL light probe is encoded not in sRGB color space, but linear color space. What this means is that the information Poser gets from this image is not only positioned incorrectly, but grossly over bright.

You won't get any decent contouring from such an image. It's basically the equivalent of several hundreds really bright light bulbs arrayed in front of and under your subject.

Throw that away.

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Here, I converted it to linear color space. That should get you some improvement just to get started.

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Here's another better version. I darkened all the parts that come from below the subject.

This should work pretty well now.

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Here is a figure lit with the original IBL image you were using at 100%, along with a single infinite light at 70%.

Everything is blown out. Too much light.

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Here I substituted the doctored version I gave you. Much better.

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Wow thats a hell of a difference. That image actually came with poser 7 and all of the ones that came with it are made that way.

I am rendering it now with the image you posted at first after changing a few things with the lights mainly positioning and changing out the IBL image.

Well the render finally finished.and here it is the only difference between this and the last is I changed the IBL image to the one you posted at first and the sunlight shadow spotlight I just moved it to point at her instead of pointing at her head it pointsat her from the viewers right.

I tried SR3 but the 100% processor bug inflicted my system so i had to uninstall and reinstall P7 with SR2....if someone knows why this bug happens and how to avoid it, or maybe someone somewhere is gonna release SR4 that fixes this so i can have a better P7,lol

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

In the RDNA forums (somewhere) there is a really nice discussion of IBL and someone (Traveller?) posted a shader setup and set of masks he uses. Basically, you create an IBL sphere which has left, right, front, back, upper, and lower areas. You can vary the color and intensity of all these areas through the inputs to the nodes. You can use it then to give a directionality, and even color to the IBL, which can give you some really nice effects.

Attached Link: IBL Ins and outs by Olivier on 01/07/06

It was Olivier.

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Quote - Well the render finally finished.and here it is the only difference between this and the last is I changed the IBL image to the one you posted at first and the sunlight shadow spotlight I just moved it to point at her instead of pointing at her head it pointsat her from the viewers right.

For sunlight, where is extremely far away, all the light rays are essentially parallel. The correct type of Poser light to use for this purpose is a Infinite light. A spotlight has a specific location where the rays originate from, as well as having a cone which modules and limits the illumination.

For an outdoor simulation, don't use a spotlight. Use one IBL and one Infinite.

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Quote - Well the render finally finished.and here it is the only difference between this and the last is I changed the IBL image to the one you posted at first and the sunlight shadow spotlight I just moved it to point at her instead of pointing at her head it pointsat her from the viewers right.

I still don't see shadows.

When learning the lighting ropes, I think it is really important that you work with a single light at a time, until you understand what it is doing when you change things.

You should turn off all but one light. Work with that light until you understand what it is contributing. For example, start only with IBL. Get the AO correct for that.

Then work with the next light which would be your Infinite. Turn off the IBL and all shadows. Render with the infinite. Then turn on shadows and render again. Observe the shadows carefully.

Then turn on both and render with them together. Adjust levels, keeping in mind what you learned from the individual renders. The final render from both will be more than the sum of the parts, however, because gamma correction will come into play.

Trying to manage all these light effects together is dangerous until you understand what each light (and light type, and shadow type) is doing by itself. It's like trying to make an arrangement for a Symphony, and you don't really know yet what the tonal difference is between a Violin and a Viola and a Cello.

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Quote - > Quote - Well the render finally finished.and here it is the only difference between this and the last is I changed the IBL image to the one you posted at first and the sunlight shadow spotlight I just moved it to point at her instead of pointing at her head it pointsat her from the viewers right.

For sunlight, where is extremely far away, all the light rays are essentially parallel. The correct type of Poser light to use for this purpose is a Infinite light. A spotlight has a specific location where the rays originate from, as well as having a cone which modules and limits the illumination.

For an outdoor simulation, don't use a spotlight. Use one IBL and one Infinite.

Ok that makes sense but I have found that I have trouble getting proper shadows with infinite lights and no spot.

Quote - > Quote - Well the render finally finished.and here it is the only difference between this and the last is I changed the IBL image to the one you posted at first and the sunlight shadow spotlight I just moved it to point at her instead of pointing at her head it pointsat her from the viewers right.

I still don't see shadows.

When learning the lighting ropes, I think it is really important that you work with a single light at a time, until you understand what it is doing when you change things.

You should turn off all but one light. Work with that light until you understand what it is contributing. For example, start only with IBL. Get the AO correct for that.

Then work with the next light which would be your Infinite. Turn off the IBL and all shadows. Render with the infinite. Then turn on shadows and render again. Observe the shadows carefully.

Then turn on both and render with them together. Adjust levels, keeping in mind what you learned from the individual renders. The final render from both will be more than the sum of the parts, however, because gamma correction will come into play.

Trying to manage all these light effects together is dangerous until you understand what each light (and light type, and shadow type) is doing by itself. It's like trying to make an arrangement for a Symphony, and you don't really know yet what the tonal difference is between a Violin and a Viola and a Cello.

Ok which light should have the shadows? the IBL or the sunlight? also if i am going to have to do so many test renders I think Ill have to cut everything but the lights back to basic settings because if i dont it would take hours to do several test renders lol.

There is no option for shadows on IBL. You would like your shadows on Infinity lighting which, for daylight, is your primary light source. For test renders, set back your settings but not so far back that raytracing suffers. Once you work out your lighting for the scene, then scale up your settings for the final render. Remember, you are only working with 2 lights. The renders should go quickly.

Quote - There is no option for shadows on IBL. You would like your shadows on Infinity lighting which, for daylight, is your primary light source. For test renders, set back your settings but not so far back that raytracing suffers. Once you work out your lighting for the scene, then scale up your settings for the final render. Remember, you are only working with 2 lights. The renders should go quickly.

Maybe they should go quickly with only two lights but the last render i posted took a couple of hours to render and it only had two lights. I only have an AMD 2800+ for a processor and only a gig and a half of ram.

A couple hours!?! I don't have anything that takes a couple hours. Hmmm. Even if I assume your processor is 4 times slower than my laptop (which it isn't) you should see nothing longer than 10 minutes for the kind of render you are doing. You have no refraction or reflection that I can see,which are the usual killers.

What version of Poser, and service release?

What are you render setting, light settings, shadow settings, etc.

I can do a render like you produced in less than a minute.

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I agree with BB, couple hours is excessive for a simple scene. Unless there is more to the scene we are not seeing. Your background appears to belong to a scene set which means that you will have additional objects and props placed about. If that is true, Poser will try to render everything regardless whether you see it in your camera view or not. I would suggest you switch to your Auxiliary camera and identify every prop on the set. Determine if the props are necessary to the scene and either delete them or make them invisible. This is an inherent problem with Poser. The more props and objects present and unseen adds to the render time.

> Quote - A couple hours!?! I don't have anything that takes a couple hours. Hmmm. Even if I assume your processor is 4 times slower than my laptop (which it isn't) you should see nothing longer than 10 minutes for the kind of render you are doing. You have no refraction or reflection that I can see,which are the usual killers. > > What version of Poser, and service release? > > What are you render setting, light settings, shadow settings, etc. > > I can do a render like you produced in less than a minute.

You must have one hell of a computer lol

Poser 7 version 7.0.2.127

guess i need another post for another screenshot

turn of displacement in the rendering setting. min shading rate should be 1 or 2 for teste renders.
pixel samples 7? 3 for test renders.

IMO of course.

Quote - turn of displacement in the rendering setting. min shading rate should be 1 or 2 for teste renders.
pixel samples 7? 3 for test renders.

IMO of course.

Well I am currently doing a test render with raytraced shadows and everything else turned down to the minimum settings and it is still taking a hell of a lot longer to render than the 1 minute quoted by BB lol I dont have a clue why my renders are going so slow. the longest render i have ever had was 26 hours. and that was a royal pain waiting on my computer for that long lol.

Did you re-examine the content of your scene? As stated before, if you have too many props in the scene that are not in camera view, they add to the render time.

Quote - Did you re-examine the content of your scene? As stated before, if you have too many props in the scene that are not in camera view, they add to the render time.

The only things in the scene are the ground plane the pillar the wall and V4.

It almost sounds like the scene might be texture intensive and a possibility that the displacement setting might be slowing down the render.

Check your material room settings for your scene and determine if a displacement map is needed. With such a detail level on your background, I wouldn't be surprised that there is one. While in the material room, change the Texture Quality to None on the Image_Map. In your render settings, uncheck displacement and re-render to determine how fast is your turnover. If no difference, then systematically make each part of your scene invisible and again render. Doing this will isolate where the problem is occurring. A highly detailed texture map will cause your system to slow down considerably. Happened to me once on a slower machine.

Quote - > Quote - turn of displacement in the rendering setting. min shading rate should be 1 or 2 for teste renders.

pixel samples 7? 3 for test renders.

IMO of course.

Well I am currently doing a test render with raytraced shadows and everything else turned down to the minimum settings and it is still taking a hell of a lot longer to render than the 1 minute quoted by BB lol I dont have a clue why my renders are going so slow. the longest render i have ever had was 26 hours. and that was a royal pain waiting on my computer for that long lol.

26 hours is so unrealistic that i can not even belive you.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - turn of displacement in the rendering setting. min shading rate should be 1 or 2 for teste renders.

pixel samples 7? 3 for test renders.

IMO of course.

Well I am currently doing a test render with raytraced shadows and everything else turned down to the minimum settings and it is still taking a hell of a lot longer to render than the 1 minute quoted by BB lol I dont have a clue why my renders are going so slow. the longest render i have ever had was 26 hours. and that was a royal pain waiting on my computer for that long lol.

26 hours is so unrealistic that i can not even belive you.

Believe it or don't but this
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1713311
is the render that took 26 hours

Aha - your min shading rate is way too aggressive. I'll explain later when to set it that low, but .07 is going to really slow you down.

Set it to 3 and see what happens. That's not a good setting for a final render, but it is good for a test render.

Then set it to 1 and see what happens.

There are occasional good reasons to go below 1, but such things should be handled with thought and care, not as a matter of course, and certainly not for test renders when you're trying to learn lighting.

hborre, what you said about things outside the scene being rendered as well is not correct. They do contribute to other calculations, such as shadows, and reflections, but the actual rendering of those objects does not happen.

In any case, that's not the issue here.

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Also Pixel Samples = 7 is too high for test renders, and even for final renders, on a computer like yours. The tiny difference between 3 and 7 is not worth the time for most renders.

Set it to 1 for a lighting test. Use 3 for a good draft render.

Also your bucket size at 128 is good for speeding up if you make all the other settings light-weight as I describe. However, if you're going to run out of memory, it will kill you. So you should be using 32 when you do final renders.

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You showed me the IBL outer settings, but not the actual AO values.

This will affect speed - I need to see those.

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What is your Poser Display Unit set to? (Inches, feet, etc.)

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Quote - What is your Poser Display Unit set to? (Inches, feet, etc.)

I set it to inches after reading a few things last night also the AO settings where the heck do I get them lol I thought that was them lol

Oh and I have been experimenting with the scene trying to get the thing to render faster and even on Poser 4 renderer which I finally got to render this thing after switching the shadows to depth mapped even then its slow as hell and there seems to be a bluish cast over the scene in almost all of my renders that isnt supposed to be there.

Ok after setting that shading rate to 3 it renders much faster but its still not a one minute render lol damn I need a computer upgrade bad.

I also got rid of the bluish cast to the render but I had to turn off the lights that I had been using and make two new ones but at least now there is a shadow on the ground under her

On the IBL Properties, under the Ambient Occlusion checkbox, there is a button called Scene AO Options. Push that.

But I guess since you never pushed it, they are at the default values.

Which is why you can't see any AO at all. The default values do not produce large area AO effects - only small crevices.

But first let's get your renders down to a couple minutes. Then we can adjust the AO.

Also, for test rendering, don't render big. I always render to my document window size while testing. I shrink my window, and move the camera to zoom into an area that I'm interested in. Most of my test renders are done under 600 pixels in each dimension.

The amount of work goes up with the area of the render, i.e. the width times height. If you compare render times of 1000x1000 versus 500x500, the larger will take four times as long because that is a million pixels instead of 250 thousand pixels. A test render at 300 by 300 is only 90 thousand pixels, less than one tenth the time of the full size render.

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Quote - On the IBL Properties, under the Ambient Occlusion checkbox, there is a button called Scene AO Options. Push that.

But I guess since you never pushed it, they are at the default values.

Which is why you can't see any AO at all. The default values do not produce large area AO effects - only small crevices.

But first let's get your renders down to a couple minutes. Then we can adjust the AO.

Also, for test rendering, don't render big. I always render to my document window size while testing. I shrink my window, and move the camera to zoom into an area that I'm interested in. Most of my test renders are done under 600 pixels in each dimension.

The amount of work goes up with the area of the render, i.e. the width times height. If you compare render times of 1000x1000 versus 500x500, the larger will take four times as long because that is a million pixels instead of 250 thousand pixels. A test render at 300 by 300 is only 90 thousand pixels, less than one tenth the time of the full size render.

Yeah its no wonder I didnt know where it was lol
I cut down the size of the render to 300 wide and it still takes a bit of time for the render to start when the thing says rendering and the screen goes gray but when it does start it is done in about 30 seconds. it is kind of small but iI can tell things I need to see though maybe I just want to zoom the image in on a full size area of about 300 square that way i can tell how things are easily.

I really hate to have to do this but I have a class I need to go to now its in about 20 minutes but if you can post something to get me started Ill try it when I get back from class ( class is about 3 hours)

I appreciate you guys taking time to try to help me out

Quote - It was Olivier.

At the point in my 3d experience to try increase my lighting skills and following this thread. I don't mean to hi-jack the topic but I assume a simple answer is all that is required. In the Oliver example you point to, with the correct node references, can you change the ibl light nodes from pre-created material sets or is it better to save out the whole light set complete?

In plain english can I apply a set of saved materials from IBL light A and apply them to new or different IBL light that I have named IBL ligjht B?

Gary

"Those who lose themselves in a passion lose less than those who lose their passion"

In the same sentence you asked "can you change" as well as "is it better to". Let me take that apart.

You can do either. It is the same process as any other material, even though it is a light shader. From the material room, you can save the node setups and reload them later. You can save from one light and load on another light.

However, be aware that the nodes don't tell the whole story. The light itself has properties, such as color and intensity, that appear to be in the nodes, but they don't actually get defined by the nodes. Poser treats these light parameters like they are independent quantities, regardless of what light shader you load. Supppose you save a light shader and at that time the light intensity is 50%. Days later you have a light at 100%, and you try loading that shader again. You will still be at 100%, not the 50% you saved it as.

So, if you want to record all the information, it is "better" to save the entire light as a light object in your library.

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Here's a handy tip.

For lighting experiments, I often like to clone a light, turn off the original and then manipulate the clone. I can then easily switch which is on and do comparison renders.

In Poser 7 this is easy. Select a light. Use menu Edit/Duplicate. You now have another just like it.

I do this a lot for spot lights, too. I make one at a low intensity, with all the blur and everything just how I like. Then I clone it and move the clone slightly. I clone again and move the clone slightly.

It's a very fast way to get an array of 5 to 10 spotlights. Very useful for doing stage lighting, for example.

Believe it or not, I have almost no "light sets" in my library. Because I have become very skilled at creating custom lighting in less than a minute, I almost always make my lights from scratch for each situation.

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Thanks, understand the issues of intensity, etc from one light to the next. I'm experimenting using the Oliver image maps with light coming from different directions right, left, up, down, front and back by making various pieces and or several pieces of the color math black. Then messing around with color tones. Been saving my variations off as light sets and was curious if it would have been more prudent to use the material room to bring them back in to replace, vs loading back in another light.

Have used the duplicate function to light an indoor office hallway to make it look like the lights are coming out of can type fixtures. Major time saver.

Gary

"Those who lose themselves in a passion lose less than those who lose their passion"

Pardon me but I was looking around when I was in Poser last night -
I never did find out where I could set AO on materials (as opposed to lights):

quote: *The AO strength on materials should be set about 10 times as high as on lights to get a comparable effect,

*Thanks

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its next to reflect,refract,.....
raytracing.

OH so its in the Posersurface main panel.

Thanks I will look at it when i am back on my home machine!

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no. under nodes. where you have your raytracing nodes.

There is a node for Ambient Occlusion. It generates white except where there is something nearby, then it generates a darker shade gray. We use this information to selectively alter the reflectivity or brightness in a shader.

You generally plug it into the parameter that controls the diffuse reflectivity in your shader setup. If you're using the built-in diffuse capability of the root node (poser surface) then that would be the Diffuse_Value. If you're using other diffuse nodes, such as Clay or Velvet, you'd use appropriate parameters on those nodes. It is also possible to plug it directly into color channels to darken any color. This is sometimes used to create "dirty" shaders - shaders that appear to have collected dirt in crevices.

Whoever said 10 times the strength actually meant distance. The distance on the AO node seems to behave or mean something different than the distance on the light-based AO. In many ways, controlling the distance effectively controls the strength of the shadow, so it's somewhat useful to think of the distance as a strength. However, you cannot use it to change how black the deepest shadow is. That would be the job of the strength parameter.

However, the AO node strength actually doesn't work at all. So if you want to adjust the strength you need to combine it with a Blender node, and mix some WHITE in with the AO before you plug it into your diffuse value parameter.

See here for a demo:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3099237&ebot_calc_page#message_3099237

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AH looking at your explanation in that thread you linked to makes it seem not so complicated, BB.

general question here:

If I have AO nodes set up on materials, I will get AO effects on these materials EVEN IF AO is turned OFF on all lights, correct?

in other words , I am assuming AO via lights and AO via materials do not effect each other (as far as"on" of "off" status. that is )

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yes. if you hane AO in materials then they will always be on.

sorry but sometimes questoins occur to me when I am at work and unable to go check out the issue in Poser ....

I know that to create the AO effect on a Poser surface you apply the AO node to the surface that will have the "shadow" on it.

For instance I have a figure sitting in a chair, lit from above, so the poser surface of the seat cushion would have the AO node so that her legs would be creating the shadow affect on the seat cushion.

BUT will a poser surface cause on AO effect on itself if part of the surface interrupts the light ? what I mean is, the figure's legs are crossed in this scene, and the leg that is under needs to show a shadow effect on it due to the leg that is on top. so if i was to apply AO node to the posersurface "body" would the poser surface take an AO effect caused by itself?

( hmmmmm I suppose I could define the bottom leg ,only, as it's own mat zone, couldn't I )

Thanks

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Yep it does. The AO node looks around at all geometry, including polygons of its own material zone. That's why mat AO works great when you put a figure's legs or fingers close together.

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Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL

Subject: Anyone know AO well enough to help me out? Poser 7