Rectifying Vlado's new Suggested settings with desired look

[glorybound]

Whats the purpose of AO? just make it darker in crevices? its not physically accurate and it does add to render time and noise.

it adds time, but you can lower AA and enable AO, which is faster.

[Morne]

it adds time, but you can lower AA and enable AO, which is faster.

But for animation lowering the AA can cause other issues...

[Moriah]

Are you using subpixel mapping? If so try disabling it, I've had this issue before and was recommended to not use subpixel mapping with this workflow.

[MoonDoggie]

Whats the purpose of AO? just make it darker in crevices? its not physically accurate and it does add to render time and noise.

Yeah, some of our group uses it and I constantly see it at a large radius, so that part was just to get them to tone it down a bit.

[MoonDoggie]

Are you using subpixel mapping? If so try disabling it, I've had this issue before and was recommended to not use subpixel mapping with this workflow.

Ok I'll give it a test, hopefully render times don't go up too much. They usually do.

[MoonDoggie]

Btw, that AO amount shown in that picture is at a 4.0 multiplier.

Usually I keep it at 0.6 to keep it really subtle, but I can't see it below values of 2-4. Vlado or someone from the team, can you comment on what is affecting the strength of the AO in the GI settings? Usually it's way too strong at .8, in this case with Vlado's settings, it's barely noticeable.

[super gnu]

just out of interest, does the intensity change if you crank the msr right up?

[MoonDoggie]

just out of interest, does the intensity change if you crank the msr right up?

Will send a render test and let you know.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Btw, that AO amount shown in that picture is at a 4.0 multiplier.

Usually I keep it at 0.6 to keep it really subtle, but I can't see it below values of 2-4. Vlado or someone from the team, can you comment on what is affecting the strength of the AO in the GI settings? Usually it's way too strong at .8, in this case with Vlado's settings, it's barely noticeable.

I've tried to replicate that issue on a very simple scene but according to my tests AO gave the same results with the default settings and the suggested settings from Vlado, here are some examples:
Default Settings / AO on:
Vlado's Settings / AO on:
Default Settings / AO off:
Vlado's Settings / AO off:

Scene: http://ftp.chaosgroup.com/support/scenes/ao_test.max

There might be something else specific in your scene which cause that difference so if possible please pack it and send it for investigation.

Oh man, Probabilistic lights was on, forgot to turn it off. Let's see if that's the issue. Ps. it really doesn't seem to work and it doesn't seem like it should default to on.

Does the brightness difference disappear when Probabilistic lights are off?

[MoonDoggie]

Svetlozar,
For some reason, I didn't get informed there was a new post here and thus I haven't checked this thread in a couple days. Thanks for taking some time to investigate and attempt to reproduce this issue. The brightness difference is gone when probabalistic lights are off (so that's great).

I'll see if I can reproduce this locally with a stripped down scene.

Is there a forum setting so I can see replys to threads I start?

Thanks!

[vlado]

I think I saw a setting somewhere in the user profile whether to subscribe automatically to threads you create.

In any case, getting us a scene would be very very helpful.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morne]

I think I saw a setting somewhere in the user profile whether to subscribe automatically to threads you create.

Yes this one

Is there a forum setting so I can see replys to threads I start?

If you don't have the auto subscribe enabled, you could always in your thread top right of any page in that thread click on "Thread Tools" and then the 3rd option in the flyout is "Subscribe to this Thread...".
From there it will give you various notification options to choose from.

[MoonDoggie]

Yes this one



If you don't have the auto subscribe enabled, you could always in your thread top right of any page in that thread click on "Thread Tools" and then the 3rd option in the flyout is "Subscribe to this Thread...".
From there it will give you various notification options to choose from.

Thanks Morne/vlado/et al.

I subscribed to this thread now, I must have turned it off ages ago because I was getting emails too quickly when I used to post a lot more.