Why, why does AO on lights…

[Lyne]

Create such a mess for many posers surfaces??? Inquiring minds want to know!

In my poser 2014 the piece I am working on right now is using the Elisa by malwin (Dragon speak probably spelled those wrong , I hope it's understandable - it's was one of the first skins at the store here) and while this skin is beautiful in the AO light, the floor, the wall , the candelabra from Fabi's Sage Babylon all get to looking like they're growing mildew ! so I had to render Dawn the big cat separately with AO on so that I can later them together later in Photoshop … what a pain.

I would just like to understand the reason that that type of lighting causes so much trouble in poser .

 

[jecnodde]

Hard to know.

Material maybe, Maybe the product by Fabi aint updated for poser 2014.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Poser 2014 seems to have some issues with AO used with the combination of SSS. I get 'glowing' issues sometimes on my habitat sets. In my case, it's usually caused by my backlighting, which I tend to place low pointed upwards in the background. The solution for me is to dim the backlight and move it so that it's pointed downward. That usually solves the issue.

 

[kobaltkween]

AO is generally not something you should use any more in pretty much any modern renderer. It's basically a hack for not having Global Illumination, and in most renderers it's vestigial. If you use it with GI, called IDL in Poser's case, then you're essentially doubling down on occlusion by adding less accurate and more brute force occlusion to the regular one. And if you're doing that in Firefly, which has accuracy and blotching problems with its occlusion in the first place, I would expect a mess.

I've used Elisa fair amount, and never with AO lights. She works great without it.

 

[Miss B]

I, as a general rule, don't use AO lights either, and never used them when I was mostly working in DS. I just never saw a reason to use them, but thanks KK, as your explanation tells me why I never liked them better than non-AO lights.

 

[jecnodde]

Well I'm use them...but in a light setup with atlest 2 more light and the light with ao dont cast shadows. Is a fill light

Still working in poser 7 thou and just uses firefly as rendering.

Those few times I'm in DS I render in 3delight, dont have iray (one thing I hate with ds is it freezes my computer during render, while poser dont)

 

[kobaltkween]

Well I'm use them...but in a light setup with atlest 2 more light and the light with ao dont cast shadows. Is a fill light

I'm responding to this mainly because I often see people using modern renderers talk about the three point light setup (main, fill, and edge), and I think it points to a fundamental misunderstanding of lighting. That is to say, people mostly just add lights according to the lights they've been told to use, instead of what those lights are supposed to _do_. The three point lighting setup that was gospel for 3D work came about precisely because there was no global illumination (GI) and no image based lighting (IBL) or ambient occlusion at the time. The "fill" light was added to make up for older renderers' lack of bounced light from the environment. As soon as we had IBL, that was better than a directional "fill" light. And as soon as we had GI, and in most renderers a world texture to go with it, we didn't really need an IBL (though that's still useful in Firefly, which doesn't support world textures). If you find you need more "fill" lighting, in most modern renderers, you should look at your environment lighting before going to a localized or directional light.

If you're going for realism, you should never use a directional light with any less than full shadows. Generally speaking, as much as you can, for local/man-made lights use mesh emitters or at least area lights.

Still working in poser 7 thou and just uses firefly as rendering.

Those few times I'm in DS I render in 3delight, dont have iray (one thing I hate with ds is it freezes my computer during render, while poser dont)

It has been a _long_ time since I used P7, but IIRC, P7 doesn't even have GI (IDL). If you're using a renderer that doesn't have GI, then you should definitely use ambient occlusion if it has it. Just keep in mind that AO lights affect all surfaces/materials the same. When you have AO on your material, you can adjust things like the bias to be specific to that material. Most of my work P7 post-work was getting rid of occlusion errors due to bias settings. Too low, and you get splotches of black on slight indents that shouldn't have them. Too high, and you get areas that should show occlusion but don't.

Also, I'd recommend only using AO instead of shadows on IBL. If you're going for realism, directional lights should generally have shadows.

 

[jecnodde]

Well realism have never been my goal. My goal have allways been make a scene that makes sense. You know, so the viewer buys the image concept. So shadows that goes the right direction from where mainlight is and so on. I'm not an expert in this area but I hate it when you look at an image and something just feels wrong - so that is my main goal, make images that atlest feels right

I uses this setup (found the post in daz forum long time ago):

"*1 HDRI light (or plain IBL) with AO. Checking "Ambient Occlusion" on your light's properties gives a good natural shadowed effect where two objects are close together. No shadows on this light.
*1 specular-only light. This light can be a spot, infinite, or point light.
Indoors:a point or spot. Outdoors;an infinite light is best. To make a light specular-only, go to the light's material settings and make the diffuse color black. No shadows on this light.
*1 "sun" light. This gives the directional light in your scene -- the one which casts shadows. For outdoor/natural light scenes, use an infinite light with raytraced shadows. For indoor/studio lights (especially with backdrops), use a spot with depth mapped shadows.
I then add a very few "highlight" point or spot lights. Point lights are nice because you can set the "distance end," making the light fall off in a very small sphere -- perfect for highlighting a face or other feature, without altering overall lighting."


Most of the time i paint my own ibl map, works for me . Ok tbh for many years I did my renders in vue, but for my image "Skeleton run" vue gave me too much hard work, and I manage to get the fog effect mush easier in poser. So after that image...something just changed, suddenly I finds it easier with poser lights then vue lights But it can also have to do with I have a much easier time doing outdoor, daytime render in vue - while darker outdoor lighting + indoor is much easier in poser.

 

[Lyne]

AH! I'll try IDL then... and thanks so much EVERYONE for you input! My Elisa looked GREAT with AO- it was the PROPS that didn't... sigh.

 

[kobaltkween]

AH! I'll try IDL then... and thanks so much EVERYONE for you input! My Elisa looked GREAT with AO- it was the PROPS that didn't... sigh.

Right, right. My point was that she looks great without it, too, so you don't need to sacrifice how the props look to get her to render well. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

 

[kobaltkween]

Well realism have never been my goal. My goal have allways been make a scene that makes sense. You know, so the viewer buys the image concept. So shadows that goes the right direction from where mainlight is and so on. I'm not an expert in this area but I hate it when you look at an image and something just feels wrong - so that is my main goal, make images that atlest feels right

I uses this setup (found the post in daz forum long time ago):

"*1 HDRI light (or plain IBL) with AO. Checking "Ambient Occlusion" on your light's properties gives a good natural shadowed effect where two objects are close together. No shadows on this light.
*1 specular-only light. This light can be a spot, infinite, or point light.
Indoors:a point or spot. Outdoors;an infinite light is best. To make a light specular-only, go to the light's material settings and make the diffuse color black. No shadows on this light.
*1 "sun" light. This gives the directional light in your scene -- the one which casts shadows. For outdoor/natural light scenes, use an infinite light with raytraced shadows. For indoor/studio lights (especially with backdrops), use a spot with depth mapped shadows.
I then add a very few "highlight" point or spot lights. Point lights are nice because you can set the "distance end," making the light fall off in a very small sphere -- perfect for highlighting a face or other feature, without altering overall lighting."


Most of the time i paint my own ibl map, works for me . Ok tbh for many years I did my renders in vue, but for my image "Skeleton run" vue gave me too much hard work, and I manage to get the fog effect mush easier in poser. So after that image...something just changed, suddenly I finds it easier with poser lights then vue lights But it can also have to do with I have a much easier time doing outdoor, daytime render in vue - while darker outdoor lighting + indoor is much easier in poser.

Oh, I totally understand your choice regarding Vue and Poser. Not that I've used Vue before, but it's obviously stronger when it comes to outdoor scenes. Your light setup sounds pretty solid.

In terms of what looks right, well, the thing is, people _really_ know real light in the real world. Even when it comes to toony stuff, they expect certain real world behavior. And worst of all, IMHO, being in a specific art tool community skews one's perspective of what "right" looks like. I can't tell you how many images that people in the community have loved have made my husband outright laugh or just dismiss as terrible. Including my own works. Always due to flaws that are so common to the community that most of us barely notice them, but are glaring to outsiders. And he's generally very nice and supportive when it comes to my artwork and 3d in general.

The community- including me- can be blind to aspects outsiders see as _glaring_ errors. Which probably shouldn't worry me like it does, but, well, there's a whole _lot_ of unhelpful worries I wish I didn't have.

I also think that people are pretty particular about what they expect to match reality and what they don't. One of the aspects that drew me to the content community, one that has faded but keeps me here, is how many images tell a story. It's not something I do easily, so I appreciate it. So on the one hand, I'm a sucker for "good" lighting and well draped (or floating) clothes and cloths. On the other, I forgive a lot of elements that look "wrong" but contribute to a narrative.

So I think it also matters a lot who you want to reach. As much as I could go into detail regarding the bias against the content community in the professional 3D world, as well as the bias against digital art in the fine art world, I also know that both the professional 3D world and the fine art world are looking for expertise that is often lacking in the works from the communities they exclude. Use of light, color, and shading is a big part of their judgment. And when you're in a community that's based around specific tools, you tend to have blind spots where the tools have weaknesses.

 

[jecnodde]

Yeah true ...I'm kind of freakish picky when it comes to animals looks: their bendings, how people have posed them, if holding reins right

( I sat the whole movie "Spirit" and felt a little upset with that the horses hade eyebrowns like humans - or in barnyard where the main bull have udder!!!)


Adn I soo agree on that a good image tell a story and that is sometimes darn hard

 

[kobaltkween]

( I sat the whole movie "Spirit" and felt a little upset with that the horses hade eyebrowns like humans - or in barnyard where the main bull have udder!!!)

OMG, yes! What is up with the bull on Barnyard having an udder? I feel like we're so divorced from where our food comes from that kids are growing up with the weirdest ideas about animals.

Oh, total aside, your comment about reins prompts me to mention that people are generally losing the whole notion of reins and what they are. I'm now consistently seeing "reign [something] in" as an expression online.

 

[jecnodde]

Yeah, darn strange. I grew up with lots of animal and have worked professional with both cows, pigs and horses and I get scared that most ppl have no clue how it looks in a barn. They only know what the newspaper report (and that is allways those bad things, where animal care have gone wrong) So sadly alot of ppl in sweden thinks farmer are sadist ppl who enjoy hurting animals and that what is shown in newspaper and tv is totelly normal. That makes me so sad, since it is so far away from what I have seen and how I worked. Sight, we are going so off topic right now