Just a little something different. I would like to cover one of AM's lighting and rendering techniques called Ambient Occlusion.
Simply put, Ambient Occlusion can simulate a globally illuminated object in a scene, essentially one of those renders that looks like it was shot at twilight or on a cloudy day where the direction of the lightsource seems to be scattered.
Here is a simple picture explaining this concept. There are no lights in this scene, it just "looks" that way. I just have 5 cubes and one ground plane and the Ambient Occlusion turned on.
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Of course you can adjust your AO settings to change the mood of the render.
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OK, I cheated a little bit here. I added one bulb light in front of the boxes. But this is a VERY simple way to get ambient mood lighting into your scene without too much effort.
Going back to the no light setup, AO is a great tool for showing off the little "greeblies" and doo-dads that give your models that extra detailed look.
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Let's Get Started!

Create a New Choreography.
For this tutorial, I will be deleting all lights, and the ground plane. Make sure that these are also deleted from the Objects folder in the Project Workspace.
I'm also going to change the camera background color to 50% gray. This is just a personal preference.
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Now expand the property triangle for Choreography1, underneath you will find a setting for "Global Ambience Type" It set set to "None" by default. If you click on it there will be the option for "Global Color" or "Image Based Lighting". We will be using Global Color for now. Your properties should look someting like this.
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This alone is not enough to get Ambient Occlusion up and running. You have to make sure that your Rendering Options are also set to use Ambient Occlusion. Go to your menu bar and select Tools->Options. Select the Rendering Tab. If this is your first time setting these options, then it will look like the top of next image. To get into the settings, just click the "Advanced" Checkbox. In the Settings on the left column, scroll down to Ambient Occlusion and change it's property to On. That's all we need for right now. Go ahead and Click "OK".
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Now we have an empty scene with nothing in it! Hooray!
I'm putting in a very simple Cylinder object into my Choreography and used the Render Mode Tool (Shortcut "q") to render the contents of the window.
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From the Global Ambience Settings, we are getting 100% brightness from our color and 0% Occlusion. This is not exactly what we want right now, but it is also useful for rendering a whole scene as Flat Shaded without having to enable "Toon" style rendering! Lets get back on track here. Go into the Vhoreography1 settings and set the Occlusion property to 100% and re-render your window. It should look like this.
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There are 2 important things to notice here. 1.) This took a really long time compared to having Occlusion set to 0% 2.) Only the inside of the Cylinder was shadowed.
This is because of the the way AO is calculated. It works by measuring the distance between objects and creates shadows based on that distance. The close the objects, the stronger and more accurate the shadow . The Further away, the weaker and less defined your shadow will become. For the sake of this example, I have added a Grid Wizard Model Object beneath the Cylinder and rendered using the same settings.
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*NOTE* Since AO is computationally intensive, you can use the Progressive render tool (shortcut "shift-q") to render out sections of your scene more quickly than it would take to render the whole thing out.

---------------------------------------------------- PART 2 Time for some Dynamics! ----------------------------------------
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Here is a clip that I rendered without any lights in the scene and just using AO to provide the light intensity and shadows.

Here is the step by step process to set up this process.

1.) Start out with a new Project.
2.) Create a new model and begin by creating a sphere. Since I stated I will be doing this step by step, I'll show you my technique for doing this.
From the Tools->Options Menu, select the Modeling tab and make sure that your Lathe Cross Sections is set to 8, and hit OK.
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Create a new Model Object and create a spline like so...
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Hit the "L" key to lathe the object, you should end up wit a cylinder. Now select the top ring and delete all of its CPs. You will end up with a single circle of splines.
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Change your view to the Left side and rotate your ring 90 degrees (1). Change back to your front view and select and delete all the CPs on the Left Side (2). You should be left with a moon shaped object (3), Select the spline on the left half and hit "k" to break the spline. (4). Select the remaining half circle and move them slight to the right. This is necessary because we dont want the CPs to overlap on the Axis. (5.) Now select only one section of the spline and hit the "L" key. You will end up with a sphere just like in (6.)
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Now select the whole shere (click any CP and hit the "/" key). Copy and Paste a new Sphere and scale it (shortcut "s" ) to look like the following image.
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I've added 4 more smaller spheres to the top of the UFO at the point where the two larger spheres meet.
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Now for the Tentacle Legs!
Create a new cylinder shape the same way we started. From the Front View, click and draw a vertical spline. Select it and hit "L" to lathe. This may seem redundant, but to make a perfect shaped cylinder, delete the top ring again. Select the bottom ring and Extrude (shortcut "E") use "Shift-Arrow Key UP" to make your perfect cylinder.
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Now let's make 4 legs by copying and pasting these cylinders. We can make each leg pointy by scaling down the bottom ring of CPs.
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3.) Time to Add the Bones!
Click on the Bones Mode icon to begin adding bones (1.). Add the first bone at the center of the UFO, starting at the Base and dragging upwards (2.). With the first bone selected, add the next set of bones down one of the legs (3.) making sure that each of the bones roll handles are pointing outward in the same direction.
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Repeat the same for the other 4 legs, making sure that you select the first bone before adding the next leg.
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Now to assign the CPs to the bones. Click back on the Thom Icon, (Yellow guy icon) or just hit "F5" to go back to modeling mode. Select the Spheres that make up the UFO and hit Hide (Shortcut "H"). You can now go back into bones mode and select the base bone and then drag a selecttion around all the CPs. You can switch back and forth to repeat the process for the legs. Hitting "H" again when you are in modeling mode will unhide all the rest of the CPs.
**NOTE** You can switch between wireframe and shaded view by pressing "8" for wireframe and "9" for shaded, and "0" for shaded with wireframe ***
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4.) This is a lot of set up but it is almost done. We now need to make a starting pose for the UFO. Right-Click on Actions in the Project workspace and select New->Action. If this is the only model in your project, it will be imported automatically. If there is more than one, you will be asked to select your model from a list. You should see something like this. From here, grab the leg bones and pose them into an arrangement like this.
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***NOTE: If you haven't yet, dont forget to SAVE YOUR PROJECT! I'm guilty of forgetting to do this too. *****
5.) At this point we can place the UFO model in the Choreography. If you don't have one right now, create one. If it has lights and a floor model, delete the lights but leave the floor.
Drag your model into the Choreography and scale it to match what is shown in the next image. Next, drag and drop your action onto the model.
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6.) Now it is time to create the victim, er target for the UFO to try and abduct. An easy way would be to copy one of the spheres from the UFO model and paste it into a new model window. We are also going to create a Force Object. Right-Click on your Objects Folder and Create->New Force. Change it's Settings to Type "Sphere" and its Magnitude "-300" and Kind "Fan". This will create a bubble that will be sucking in the UFO arms, but from the viewers perspective it will look like the UFO is the one reaching out.
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7.) Now to attach the force to the Target. Right-Click the target name in the project workspace and select New->Pose->On /Off. A new Pose window will pop up. Now Drag the Force from below into the Relationship1 folder. The force should now be surrounding your model.
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8.) OK, now drag the Target model into your Choreography and place it near your UFO appendages.
*** NOTE: You can open up multiple windows to see what you are doing from different angles. Just click on the toolbar Window->New Window or (Shortcut Alt-W)
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9.) Next up is adding the Dynamic Constraints to the tips of the UFO arms. From the Choreography, click on the UFO model and then select Skeletal Mode from the top bar (Looks like a running Stick Figure). Then right-click the tip of one of the legs and select New Constraint->Dynamic Constraint. Do this for all four legs.
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Select the Constraint settings for each leg and adjust the Dynamic Constraint->Dynamic Options->Stiffness ="30%"
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** Don't forget to save! ***
To test our synamic setup, make sure that you give enough time for the simulation to work, set your choreography range to at least 3 seconds. An set the Dynamics->Force to 0% in the Y axis. This will make sure that only the Target will be acting upon the UFO.
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We have to turn on the pose for the Target so that the Sphere Force is turned on. If the pose slider window is not visible, Right-Click on a blank area on the Project workspace and select "Pose Sliders"
Once it is available, Select your Target and then Turn your Pose to "ON"
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We are almost Done! Save again before we continue.
Right click anywhere within the Choreography window or the Choreography name in the Project workspace and select "Simulate Spring Systems".
You should see the arms try to go out and reach for the target. Success!!
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10.) To finish this off, let's animate the target moving across the path of the UFO. Set it's position to the right of the UFO at Frame 00:00 (0 seconds) and just to the left of the UFO at frame 03:00 (3 seconds)
Simulate the SPring System again. This time the legs will dynamically move towards the moving Target.
**Note: I turned on Onion Skinning mode to show movement here (Look in Tools->Settings->Onion Skin***
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Last step is to render this out. Since there are no lights in the scene, it will render out black. We need to turn on Ambient Occlusion under the Choreography. For teh sake of this tutorial, set the color to white, and intesity and Occlusion to 100%.
If you render your scene, it should look something like this.
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Here is the Project file in case someone gets stuck on the tutorial
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This is great, and thank you for sharing.
CHEERS!

Yes, thanks a lot..
Been wanting to "get that look" for a while now..
Can't wait to give the tut a go....

When I have some time I'll try and come up with a more artistic use for Ambient Occlusion. I was kind of working through a migraine this weekend while making the tutorial. I could think things through, but I was just not feeling the creative juices flowing

Feel free to ask any questions. Oh, here's something interesting I did a while back. Toon Shaded plus Ambient Occlusion and Displacement Mapping all in one render. I was told it couldn't be done hahahaha

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Fascinating use of negative force. So, in reality... it isn't the UFOs trying to grab me, I am actually attracting the UFOs? My goodness, this could explain why there are so many UFO sightings out in the boonies of West Virginia... all those lonely people living in the middle of no where "sucking in" the UFOs against their will. If you use a negative force... is that like "The Dark Side"? Will I become evil and sinister if I try this technique? Will I start to wear black outfits and wheeze when I talk?



-vern

I try not to tell people that they use too much negative force AKA "You Suck"
So I would advise keeping it within A:M and you should be safe.

It's probably too late. I wear the black outfits but I haven't started wheezing yet. And I can't strangle anyone from across the room using only my mind... yet... but I practice every day on the neighbor's dog.

-vern