Ambient Occlusion question

[Michael Emo]

Anyone use Ambient Occlusion in combination with a VRay Render and then combine?

 

For instance, if you drop Ambient Occ over the top and use a blend mode like Overlay, which is what it seems it might be for doing?

 

Does this method work very well? I'm modeling a large 3-story building.

 

Thanks.

[AJLynn]

Sure, you can always make an ao-only render and Photoshop it but it's not very realistic and a good Vray render is usually better.

[Joseph Petrino]

When pressed for time I have often put two AO layers over my image. One layer set to "soft light" and the other set to "darken". Both usually at 30%.

 

If you play with your levels and contrast you can get an acceptable image.

[Tommy L]

Micheal, are you trying this to reduce render time, as a replacement for GI?

[Michael Emo]

Hi Guys. Yes, I am looking for ways to crunch time due to crazy impossible deadline. I'm using VRay as my normal rendering engine.

 

Thanks for the input so far. I'm testing some things to see how well they are going to work. Hopefully I can figure this out. Main problem is that the model is massive. So far it's up to 53,000+ polys and that's just the front of the building!

[Tommy L]

vray can handle polygons in the billions. Do some reading on optimizing. You shouldnt need to resort to the AO.

[Michael Emo]

I figured it could handle billions of polygons given that you can build games and animations.

 

But it's not a question whether VRay can...it's weather my poor old machine can!

 

I barely to 2gb of ram on a 2.? processor. Seems so slow at times!

[Tommy L]

Hey thats fine. My old machine was an AMD800 and 512 of ram. It took a while, but it could crank out nice images as long as you didnt mind waiting. The good thing about learning on a slow machine, is it frces you to learn how to optimize stuff. Then, when you get a new one its like.....well its like playing snooker on a full size table for a while, then going for a game of pool.