Hello to all. Did you miss me? I was badly ill and recovering just now, so I have been KO for a while. I hope everything is good for you all.

(chorus from the forum: who is this guy? :biggrin:)

I notice that these days many characters come in two flavours: skin textures with AO shaders, and "normal" ones.

So the question is: should I use AO shaders when I have AO-enabled lights, or it's the opposite? I have never understood if AO shaders are meant to "integrate" AO lights or to substitute them. (I use Poser Pro 2010).

Thanks in advance!

Giorgio

If you are using Ambient Occlusion, the use the AO Shaders. For all other techniques, use the regular ones.

At least, this is what I do, and it seems to work! :)

the opposite.  if the AO is in the material, you don't need it to be in the lights and vice versa.  IDL does it's own version of occlusion, so you don't want to use material AO with IDL either.  you don't want to use light AO with IDL, for that matter.  you always want your occlusion to get calculated in only one way.  so use IDL or light AO or shader AO, but not any of those together.

edited to add: not that it will damage anything to use two forms of AO  together, it's just unnecessary and a little less accurate.  sort of like applying a shadow twice.

Hey, I've learned something tonight. Good to know.

Interesting. From a practical point of view, does that mean scenes will render faster if I don't use AO lights with AO shaders? That is what I understand if my computer doesn't have to calclulate shadows twice.

Quite simple answer.
IF you are rendering in PoserPro 2010 with IDL......

Drop all and everything concerning AO on lights and or textures.

I do not know exactly anymore, as most of this discussing was from the time IDL was included in Poser, but I think all AO settings, if connected, are ingnored at IDL render time.

AO was never that good anyway, and IDL is far better.

P8 will complete ignore material AO when rendering with IDL.  However, PP2010 will consider material AO during IDL rendering.  On the material room AO node exists a tick box to activate this feature.