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

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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

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September 9, 2015 : New (Long Term) Lightwave Goals

I have been using Lightwave for over 11 years (!?). Most of my projects are in a particular style; and while I try to learn a new technique with each one, they still fit within a certain genre and thus are somewhat limited. Since Lightwave has so much capability that I pretty much ignore, I’ve set two goals to add to my arsenal:

  1. Occlusion Rendering and Compositing
  2. Understanding/ Utilizing DP Kit

Most of my projects tend to be cel-shaded, and so I have had little need for realistic renders. However, cartoon-like shows can’t still have refined renders (see just about any 3D animated movie or TV show these days). Being able to create a solid Ambient Occlusion render and compositing it (via After Effects) would be a cool technique to possess.

As for DP Kit, I stumbled across this free plug-in a few weeks back (although I have yet to install it on my machine). It is a collection of additional nodes for the Node Editor; and from the videos I’ve seen, it can help in creating some cool animated effects and motion graphics in Layout. Below is an example of some of its power:

Understanding and utilizing DP Kit will actually help me in two ways. First, it can allow me to create some cool effects and animations, but it will also force me to get a better understanding of the Node Editor – which is something I don’t know nearly as well as I should.

Both of these goals are longer term, and neither of them are for any specific upcoming projects. My hope is to improve and expand my abilities in Lightwave. This means work on them might take a back seat at times, but I’m okay with that.

posted by Pi Visuals at 11:55 pm

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