Ambient Occlusion and hide geometry?

[DasMatze]

Hi!

I use SketchUp to create models for RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, the Cry-Engine and the Source Engine. The textures look much better with baked ambient occlusion on it. So far I have used the free Podium evaluation version to render some pics and apply them onto the model. Works great but the full version is quite expensive and I'm missing a special feature I'm looking for, which are the reasons why I took a look at the Twilight demo: Is it possible to hide geometry but let it still cast shadows like it would not be hidden (for rendering the insides of buildings etc.)? Also how do I achieve an ambient occlusion render like Podium does? I messed around but all I could get is what you can see on the pic in the attachment (the lower pic is Podium).

Thanks in advance!

DasMatze

[Chris]

Hi DasMatze! Nice model!

First about ambient occlusion, the quickest suggestion is to go to the Light Editor, turn off sunlight. The switch the Sky Type to "Sky Color" and choose a Background Color somewhere from Gray to White, depending on how bright you want your scene. This will remove the strong shadows and give you more or less the same results as your Podium render.

Unfortunately it isn't possible to have an object cast a shadow but not be visible. The render engine doesn't support that feature.

[DasMatze]

Thank you for the reply! It really looks almost the same now.

Too bad about the hiding feature. There really doesn't seem to be a renderer which supports that feature then.

DasMatze

[Fletch]

yeah, if it's not there, it's diff. for it to cast a shadow.
there must be some game engines that support this, but not that I'm aware of in SU plugin format.
did you look at Turtle or other sim engine?