GPU Baked Ambient Occlusion Request.

[zero-13]

The baked AO of V-Ray CPU has been a wonderful feature for many years, I often will switch to CPU because of its convenience.

Is there any possibility that this might be added to GPU? I know I ask about this every few years but it is such a time saver not having to mess with compositing if you just need quick straight out of VFB images.

GPU is so lovely, but can also look very flat and under defined sans AO.

Thank you!

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Hello zero-13

I'm taking a look into this now, Are you using 3Ds max?
Can you explain your workflow please, are you talking about AO under GI tab? or the workflow with ExtraTex render element?

Best,
Muhammed

[zero-13]

Apologies on the late reply!

Yes, using Max, and also yes AO under GI Tab of CPU.

It's definetley not a huge issue by any means just a really nice convenience, quality of life feature, I imagine that was perhaps the initial reasoning of adding it to the GI section originally prior to even V-Ray RT / GPU.

It's ultra convenient for many situations, say you need a quick white model or beauty pass that has a lot of paneling or closely placed or stacked elements, without AO you loose many fine details and tons of definition, also helps when using IPR as you get a better 1:1 idea of your scene, so it would be a perfectly splendid addition to GPU that honestly saves me a ton of time.

I realize the VFB is now a robust compositor, I love all the capability that has been added, however even compositing layers in VFB is much slower and far more steps than just ticking the AO box and done.

I appreciate everyone's time considering this small feature parity item.

Thank you,

[Muhammed_Hamed]

zero-13 Hello!

Thanks for explaining your use case, it is very helpful.
I haven't used this AO feature in many years, I think since I started using ACES system for my rendering.
ACES offers better bounces of light and global illumination in the scene, the ACES View Transform includes tone mapping that expands mid-tone contrast and compresses shadows and highlights. This helped me personally in high-end print, I think I stopped using the AO option with introduction of V-Ray Next(also because it is not a physically accurate effect)
That being said I will add your request to our system, and ask the GPU team how hard this is to implement.
I will update the thread when I have more information.

Best,
Muhammed

[zero-13]

Thank you for providing this information on a more current workflow, after this reply I will look into implementing ACES, had an old old flashback of the 2.2 Gamma days.

I work in a solo vacuum neither fully archviz nor motion graphics, as such I have no one to talk shop with, so if I don’t run across it, I’m usually the last guy with a perpetual license to know what the current best practices are.

Thank you again for reviewing the request and also very much for sharing your knowledge!

[paul_treanor]

I also would like to request that you please enable AO (VRayDirt) pass. I use it for everything.
It does render relatively fast with CPU, but now that pass is the slow one!

I like a slightly stylized look that is reliant on a good AO pass. There's a lot of fun things you can do with it in Nuke or AE. You can make any boring product look super-badass and mean, zero-13 mentioned that it's great for making geometric detail really stand out, you can use additive blends to do fake GI bounce. Photoreal doesn't always matter.