SMAK Ambient Occlusion

[philnolan3d]

For $15 this looks to be a really nice program. At first I thought it just does the same thing 3DC does and fire rays at the model so i asked and it seems there are 3 modes, 2 that work like that and a fourth that works by actually calculating distances from corners. That $15 is only while in beta, but the full price of $30 is still not bad.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=6339201#post6339201

[3DArtist]

It does look nice. I'm wondering if this will become unnecessary if Andrew adds AO to 3DC. But then again, SMAK has 3 modes of AO and someone that is focusing on this particular feature. (for now)

[GED]

why dont you just use xnormal to bake ao? its free and fast

[philnolan3d]

I have tried xnormal in the past and didn't care for the options. Found it a little confusing to use as well.

[GED]

I have tried xnormal in the past and didn't care for the options. Found it a little confusing to use as well.

its actually quite easy once u read how to use it but I agree a new User interface would be nice I think the xnormal developer has a really nice one planned for version 4.0

[3DArtist]

SMAK 1.6 is out. Now with normal map generation.

Tried xnormal on a current model and realized that it won't work with ngons. (maybe not a big deal)

Also can't find an option to render multiple uv maps in the simple ao generator tool.

Maybe there could be a link using 3DC's AppLink and SMAK. Automagically export the current object from 3DC to bake AO in the background with SMAK.

[Giuseppe]

interesting, but blender does the same

[3DArtist]

But can you start an AO bake in 10 seconds flat?

[BeatKitano]

How much poly max does it take on the high poly mesh ? In the video it was a fairly low high-poly imho, i'm curious.

[michalis]

"But can you start an AO bake in 10 seconds flat? "

In blender? In 10 sec I can bake millions of poly, all textures. What I don't understand here is that coat bakes some kind of AO, I missed something here.

[3DArtist]

So from clicking on the blender icon to starting a bake of an object you can do in 10 seconds? Yes, I know, I need to get into blender more.

The AO baking in 3D-Coat (Paint room) isn't very useful (for me anyway). There have been requests for a better AO solution here. The AO baking for voxels seems better. But I think that is available only if you are starting from voxels.

[michalis]

yes you're right "baking from voxels". This intel core2quad will fly with blender 64 bit. As the two xeon 16 threads here.

A baked example here. Baked in 3DC and re-baked in blender. And how it looks on a renderer that can't handle normal or disp maps. (sketchUp)