October 8, 2015 : Ambient Occlusion And Animations Don’t Mix (At Least In Lightwave)
My quest to achieve an acceptable Ambient Occlusion Render seems to have ended… and not how I would have liked. I have learned a great deal about the topic, but I am at an impasse.
Over the past few weeks, I have tried many different techniques and iterations for the effect… oh boy have I tried many. This includes Lightwave’s build-in shader, the DP Dome plug-in, the DP Kit plug-in, the DP Filter effect, a Final Gather render (via Urbanexile.net), a Monte Carlo render, and even a Backdrop Only render.
On their, most of the renders looked nice. They would all be viable options for a static image. However, for an animated clip, there were issues with the shadow pixels ‘jumping’ or ‘flickering’. This occurred when the character was stationary but became more noticeable when he moved, and was even worse when the camera zoomed in.
At this point, I have concluded that Lightwave cannot produce a sufficient animated sequence with Ambient Occlusion (or any type of Global Illumination for that matter). In the meantime, I have already figured out a method that should get what I want. I will save this for another post, but the topic is Multi-Pass Rendering with Area Lights.
posted by Pi Visuals at 1:39 am
Tags: Ambient Occlusion , DP Kit , Lightwave