I just got version 13 today. I am playing with AO. I don't think I am doing very good. Here is herbie with AO and without AO. What do you think?

Indeed, it is impossible to tell which one uses AO and which one doesn't. You need to experiment with relative intensities between light and AO untill you get something worth the extra render time.

Oh ok. So what is a good standard ao setup I can try. I have the basic a:m light setup with all lights turned white and rim light at 50% intensity. I just want to see one good set up so I can understand. I saw your ao mini tut but I guess until I try more I wont fully understand the settings. I would like to just have a basic good ao setup I can use to display my models in the best light.

Thanks

That's inspiring me to try AO...tho the words "Extra Rendering Time" intimidate me BIGTIME!

Yves- Where do we find your AO tutorial?

I tried again. The first one is with ao and ibl. The second one is with ao and global color with a light grey.

I am not getting really nice results I think. I am finding it hard to get a good balance. If I set the ao intensity too high I always lose the shadow.

one just looks darker in the first one and in the second sorta the same but lighter.maybe you should change the frogs settings(not that i have t just a sugestion).like more specular on the eyes.and the jacket with a more visible color.

um... i cant tell either which one uses the ao and which doesn't. Make sure that you have the AO setting to 100% in the choreography tab. that might be the problem O_o

I have it turned on. I think my settings are bad. Here are my settings.

Okay, I suggest you get a good feel for AO before you start testing IBL. By the way, that picture is not a light probe. Light probes look something like this:


Go into the Options Window under the Rendering Tab and make sure that AO is turned on and that the sampling is set to something like 25%, and set Mutli-pass to 9 Passes.

Open up your choregraphy, set the Global Ambiance Type to Global Color, and set the color to 50% Grey RGB(128, 128, 128). Set the Ambiance to 100% and Occlusion to 100%. Use only one Sun light that is aming at the ground which will form a 45% angle. This will make the ground white and the shadow of the frog visible.

Also, make sure that your frog has little to no ambiance values.

Ok. I did those settings. The sun made every pretty strong contrast. Then I did another one using the spotlight again but at 100 and made the fill and keylight less intense.

I think it looks better than the previous ones.

Perhaps you should take things one step at a time. AO alone, AO with one light, etc. If you have AO plus the standard three light set up, it's bound to be hard to work out what's going on.