Post Pro study (on a bus)

[Chris]

I've been working on some of the basic techniques presented by Alex Hogrefe on his website (https://visualizingarchitecture.com). Post-Pro isn't something I've ever done much of so it's new (and fun ). Anyway, here is my first "study".

The bus is by ixlrlxi (who has a lot of really impressive 'retro-fantasy' models on the 3D warehouse). The scene around the bus is entirely created in Gimp using (my attempts at) Alex's techniques. I utilized a ambient occlusion render, a full render in Interior, several masks, a clay render, and a depth render. All of them except the full render were very fast to render.

I've definitely learned some useful techniques. And it's fun.

[JGA]

"ambient occlusion render"?
I didn't think that was available with TL.

[nickchun]

Nice one Chris. Good to see someone else inspired by Alex and ixlrlxi. I been a fan of both for some time, need to play with the techniques again myself. Have you looked at ixlrlxi's work on his webpage? http://ixlrlxi.livejournal.com/. He is also on DeviantArt under the alias '600V'

[Chris]

"ambient occlusion render"?
I didn't think that was available with TL.

Ambient Occlusion can be achieved by setting your background to Sky Color and choosing a gray-to-white color. It's not a true Ambient Occlusion, which is normally a very fast render (because it's optimized for occlusion only) but the result it gives you is basically the same.

Have you looked at ixlrlxi's work on his webpage? http://ixlrlxi.livejournal.com/

I did look at some of his DeviantArt stuff. I just looked at his webpage. Man, I wish I was that talented.

[JGA]

A clay render?

[Chris]

It can be combined with a Clay Render (which is just a replacement of the materials with a simple, single diffuse material). And it often is. But what makes an ambient occlusion render is that lighting is only from a uniform "ambient" light source, thus the gray or white Sky Color background. I suppose terms like that are somewhat up to interpretation. Or often driven by the capabilities of the render engine; some engines only produce clay-style ambient occlusion (again, optimization) while the Kerkythea engine doesn't have a true AO method so you have more variability.

[JGA]

OK, so the materials assigned are still rendered, it's the lack of directional shadows that form the "AO"?

[Chris]

That's how I interpret it. As I said, it's probably a term that can be used to mean different things.

[Fletch]

For the benefit of readers who may be lost in this conversation:
"ambient" : indirect light, general light, you know-the light creating the ambiance.
"occlusion" : the blocking of the visibility of something

"ambient occlusion" : the property of an object to block some of the general light when it's near another object resulting in a subtle shadow.

Render engines use this natural phenomena to quickly "fake" the look of objects being near one another. In the case of Twilight, the AO render setting was experimental and never fully developed so we don't even provide it as an option. The "look" of an AO render is quickly and easily obtained by the methods mentioned by Chris above.

[nickchun]

Fletch, I've got Ambient Occlusion as a setting under Tech>Specialised>Ambient Occlusion.