Ambient Occlusion on an interior, what is the best route?

[naik]

Perhaps you can post a pic to see exactly what you mean?
What shader are you using?

All this information is important in order to get the right help...


NAIK

[Oddgit]

unfortunately im away from my workstation currently, but i can tell you the shaders =D

I have a mib_illum_lambert shader with the mib_ambient_occlusion shader linked to the ambient attribute. its spread is set to .8 everything else is default, i have 128 samples going.
I applied it to all of the geometry in the scene. I shut off all of the lights and hit go. The exterior occlusion looks good, but this technique does not work for an interior, the room is totally dark, due to the lack of lights in the interior. I have never worked with ambient occlusion so i dont really know how to troubleshoot this issue.

I will post screen grabs when i get back from school later today.

[ftaswin]

set the max distance value to something (5) otherwise MR will calculate it against all objects in the scene which include your roof and walls so everything in it is dark.

[Oddgit]

holy crap! thanks ftaswin, that worked fantastically! and it renders WAAAY faster too =D :buttrock:

[Nothingness]

A very good hint in case you want to go for realisme:

Ambient occlusion mostly have an incorrect result in most cases. It adds shadow everywhere there are objects too close. But mostly with bright objects and corners where light might bounce more the darker shadows are incorrect.
I discovered that using the mia_material_x it has a build in AO setting and has a special setting that also enables the use color bleed. This gives a much more realistic result and gives more shadows where only needed. Only downside is it renders slower and is build into the shader.

check it out :beer:

[berniebernie]

you can also try ctrl.occlusion AO shader which seems to do a pretty sweet job of rectifying a too 'even' AO pass.

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