September 17, 2015 : Ambient Occlusion Testing
Over the past week, I’ve had some time to work on one of my recently set Lightwave goals – Ambient Occlusion Rendering. I’m still in the early phases, but progress has been made.
Most of my time has been spent researching techniques for Ambient Occlusion. I want to find a method where quality meets practicality. I have found a few promising ones; but while doing so, I realized that I will need a render that will satisfy animations (as opposed to still shots).
As such, I am creating a short animated sequence (on the order of three or four seconds) that includes an object moving as well as a camera zoom. Below is a screenshot of who I will be using as my test object:
As if there was any doubt that I was going to use a ninja! Actually, I originally set up a file with one of the characters from Taking Shape, but then I found it to be a poor choice due to the rather simplistic/ orthogonal geometry.
I am still working on the animated sequence, but I have done a few preliminary test renders for one AO technique. Below is a render with settings that I was happy with:
I haven’t put anything into After Effects for compositing. I intend on working through a few AO methods in LW before I export the renders. I believe this will be the best way for me to do a side-by-side comparison of the end results.
posted by Pi Visuals at 12:22 am
Tags: After Effects , Ambient Occlusion , Ninja Tales , Shapes