Advanced Member Roger_K Posted February 12, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 0000492: REAL Ambient Occlusion At the moment 3D Coat has a feature its calling Occlusion. Its Ok for a really basic lighting preview, if your willing to wait for it. There isnt really much point though because the render room will give you a far better lighting preview and it will do it much faster.As a baked texture its very limited in its usage. In general you don't want any direct lighting information in your textures unless its a light map, In which case there are far better solutions that this. You want colour bounce for a start and correct area shadows. Direct light is going to be handled much better by the renderer.AO in texturing and shading is generally used as what you might consider a Utility map, you dont used it directly, but more of a way of controlling certain effects.for example: Contact Shadowing Dirt Distribution -With suitable settings you can create masks which are a great base for dirt maps Cavity Mapping - These can be great for accentuation small details, wear maps for specular/reflection, dirt collection in tight crevices Ambient Occlusion -Masking a environment probe to give the impression of Global Illumination Bulge Maps - AO can be used as a displacement map to create surface indentations/ bulges around objects where they interface. great for mud None of these things can be achieved easily with the current solution. To be able to achieve these effects you need the map to be a true occlusion map and you need to be able to control how it is created.In a program like Mental Ray you have 3 main parameters that let you control the effects of the occlusion map.Max Distance: How far a ray will probe for hits before its ignored.Spread: how wide a cone of rays to shoot out from the point being sampled. in MR you get a 0-1 slider (the cosine of the cones spread angle)falloff: the fallof value of the occlusion ray.I really think this is an important feature to have in 3DC. especially for extracting detail from sculpts. To be honest I think 3DC could benefit from some additional baking feautres. In addition to AO, Curvature, and thickness maps (for faking translucency) would be great.that said at this stage I'd be happy with AOhere is how Modo does it skip to 4:45 for the occlusion shading. (cheers Ben) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Roger_K Posted February 12, 2011 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 A Cavity Map An Environment Occlusion map (a quick match to how Final Gather solves it) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 12, 2011 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 +1. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member wailingmonkey Posted February 12, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 thank you for bringing this back up , Roger! (and with such well prepared 'evidence') Maybe this isn't such a sexy feature request, but it sure is a hole in 3DC's armor, currently. (hopefully Andrew can have a good look at this, as true AO has been on the request table for over 2 1/2 years) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member ghib Posted February 15, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 15, 2011 +1 This is a standard thing to expect from a useful 3d app these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PalSan Posted February 15, 2011 Report Share Posted February 15, 2011 +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Taurus Posted February 25, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 25, 2011 uhhhh another thread for AO ? why this very important feature is clearly ignored ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 25, 2011 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 25, 2011 uhhhh another thread for AO ? why this very important feature is clearly ignored ? I asked Oleg about this and he said Andrew replied he would work on it soon, but it was no small task. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Taurus Posted February 26, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 26, 2011 I asked Oleg about this and he said Andrew replied he would work on it soon, but it was no small task. sounds great, lets be patient then Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Roger_K Posted February 28, 2011 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Thats good to hear. hopefully we'll have a good bit of time devoted to this in 3DC. there are a few utility maps that could really improve 3DC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member L'Ancien Regime Posted August 28, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted August 28, 2011 Ambient Occlusion dirt maps would be awesome... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted August 28, 2011 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted August 28, 2011 Ambient Occlusion dirt maps would be awesome... +1...again. A 3D Painting and sculpting app like 3D Coat not having Ambient Occlusion is like a renderer without Global Illumination. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member jedwards Posted August 31, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted August 31, 2011 This is one of the few reasons I have to leave the app when creating content for games. As it is now my workflow is to dump all voxel layers out to objs and import them into modo, along with the retopo mesh (also from 3dc). I then do my normal and AO bake there since the results are so much better, and right now, worth the hassle of doing (sometimes massive) file transfers, especially with how many voxel objects I can end up with in a finished character sculpt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member wailingmonkey Posted August 31, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted August 31, 2011 This is one of the few reasons I have to leave the app when creating content for games. As it is now my workflow is to dump all voxel layers out to objs and import them into modo, along with the retopo mesh (also from 3dc). I then do my normal and AO bake there since the results are so much better, and right now, worth the hassle of doing (sometimes massive) file transfers, especially with how many voxel objects I can end up with in a finished character sculpt. totally agree, and find it very puzzling why this still goes unaddressed (after what I thought were pretty valid reasons 2+ years ago) I guess it's a business choice to omit having a high-quality AO capacity in 3DC? <shrugs> (I understand there are a ton of things on Andrew's plate, but this seems like one that wouldn't require revolutionary code <---coming from a complete non-programmer, LOL) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Roger_K Posted September 6, 2011 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted September 6, 2011 :/ personally I'm close to giving up on 3DC and moving to a more polished/focused app like Zbrush or Mudbox. It just doesn't seem to be going in the direction I thought it would when I bought it(not that I'm blaming anyone, its just not going my way). There are 3 ways to paint meshes none of which are up to date with the competition in terms of polish and speed. Don't get me wrong some of the features are fantastic, allot of them leave me ripping my hair out though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted September 6, 2011 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted September 6, 2011 :/ personally I'm close to giving up on 3DC and moving to a more polished/focused app like Zbrush or Mudbox. It just doesn't seem to be going in the direction I thought it would when I bought it(not that I'm blaming anyone, its just not going my way). There are 3 ways to paint meshes none of which are up to date with the competition in terms of polish and speed. Don't get me wrong some of the features are fantastic, allot of them leave me ripping my hair out though. Which ones would those be? What I think may help here more than anything...in reference to this particular feature, is for everyone here who wants to see some movement on this...to e-mail Andrew (support@3d-coat.com) individually, and make the request. He not see the glaring need, and therefore has kept this request on the backburner.I think the lengthy wait for filling a layer (with the FILL tool), is another sore spot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member L'Ancien Regime Posted September 14, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted September 14, 2011 I asked Oleg about this and he said Andrew replied he would work on it soon, but it was no small task. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Roger_K Posted October 23, 2011 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted October 23, 2011 Which ones would those be? What I think may help here more than anything...in reference to this particular feature, is for everyone here who wants to see some movement on this...to e-mail Andrew (support@3d-coat.com) individually, and make the request. He not see the glaring need, and therefore has kept this request on the backburner. I think the lengthy wait for filling a layer (with the FILL tool), is another sore spot. there are many little things, next time I'm using 3DC ill write a list, stick it online here and see what are bugs and what im just doing wrong. Hopefully ill be doing some modelling soon. Im working on a new disney show at the moment and its primarily 2D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Roger_K Posted March 22, 2012 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted March 22, 2012 bump Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member wailingmonkey Posted March 22, 2012 Advanced Member Report Share Posted March 22, 2012 I appreciate your tenacity, Roger_K! (bump +1) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Hugo Beyer Posted March 29, 2012 Member Report Share Posted March 29, 2012 bump here too. very needed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member micro26 Posted April 2, 2012 Advanced Member Report Share Posted April 2, 2012 i use xnormal for baking ao maps, though i have to say that neither zbrush bakes true ao... Lately i dont even use ao. I bake my normal maps and then i paint with cavity filters on and then blur it .Ao maps usually need tweaking anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Garagarape Posted April 6, 2012 Advanced Member Report Share Posted April 6, 2012 +1 for AO. Still using Xnormal to get a descent one. Would be nice to have it in 3dC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Drocket Posted April 6, 2012 Member Report Share Posted April 6, 2012 +1 for AO. Still using Xnormal to get a descent one. Would be nice to have it in 3dC. +1 Agreed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted June 17, 2012 Report Share Posted June 17, 2012 +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Jax_Cavalera Posted August 21, 2013 Member Report Share Posted August 21, 2013 Just checking... I honestly do not have a working understanding of what AO is used for though in this situation for 3D Coat.. if I'm baking the normals etc.. using the NM option from the Retopo menu. What is a good distance setting for a Biped game character and is this now an improved setting in V4 as I note this discussion is a few years old yet seems to be a well targeted topic towards the questions I have. Am just wanting to determine if 3D Coat is now a good option for this feature or if I need to still go outside of 3D Coat for this and also to determine if AO is needed for Game Characters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Methelina Posted September 12, 2013 Advanced Member Report Share Posted September 12, 2013 +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PalSan Posted September 12, 2013 Report Share Posted September 12, 2013 +1 +1 for AO.Still using Xnormal to get a descent one.Would be nice to have it in 3dC. Me too. In XNormal really nice AO , very accurate and detailed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Daniel Tynan Posted December 10, 2013 Member Report Share Posted December 10, 2013 I have to create flatshaded 3d objects for integration into 2D animated shows. . .so I slap on the 3d-coat Ambient Occlusion layer to get general shading in the absence of lighting. With the right amount of light and enough blurring I get good results and it saves me lot's of time from trying to paint in shadows. Real AO calculations would be great . but I'm happy with the AO simulation we have now for my projects. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member ShaneO Posted July 7, 2015 Member Report Share Posted July 7, 2015 Is it possible to bake the new PBR AO? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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