More Ambient Occlusion Fun

Artwork Works in Progress
1

Here are some test pictures I’ve been doing to see how Ambient Occlusion is shaping up for the next release of blender. I know this technically goes into the “New Feature Tests” thread in “Finished Projects” but I’m going to be adding to these test images as time goes by and AO gets closer to being a completed feature. Anyhow…enjoy:

Image 1: Unknown
OSA 8
Samples 10 (Or 8…can’t remember.)
http://blender.spaceisbig.com/ao_test5.jpg

Image 2: 4 min 30 sec
OSA 8
Samples 16
http://blender.spaceisbig.com/ao_test7.jpg

Image 3: 5 min 30 sec
OSA 16
Samples 16
http://blender.spaceisbig.com/ao_test8.jpg

Please Note: JPEG Compression is not friendly sometimes

My Machine:
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
512 MB PC2100 DDR
Windows XP Home Edition
Bf-Blender CVS (as obtainable below in my signature)

As always…with render times your mileage may vary even if you have similar specs. And those numbers are hardly procise. My margin of error is probably in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 seconds. (Not great I know but I don’t have a stopwatch handy so stop whining)

Some information about the scene:
-There are NO lamps of any kind in this scene
-Ambient Occlusion set to Sky Color and Add
-Dist is set to 5
-Energy is set to 3
-Random Sampling is OFF
-Use Distances is OFF
-Sky set to Blend from black (Horizon) to white (Zenith)
-Materials all have Ref of .8 and Spec of .2 (Standard Lambert and Cook Torr shaders)
-Hardness is set to 50 for all materials
-Traceable is ON for all materials as is Shadow
-Smoothing is ON for the spheres, however there is currently an error with the way AO accounts for smoothing, hence the ugly facets
-No objects are subsurfed
-Shadows and Ray are on in display buttons (F10)

May be a whole lot more info than anyone wants but I figure the settings would give people an idea of what works/doesn’t work. I’ll be posting more info like this and perhaps a tutorial very soon so keep checking back.

Oh and I nearly forgot! Here’s the blend:

http://blender.spaceisbig.com/233_ao_test.blend

You MUST have the most recent compiled version of blender for the settings I’ve mentioned to yeild the results I’ve displayed.

I hope this is appreciated and that you guys don’t exceed my bandwidth limits :o

2

neat. i really like the a.o.

3

Nicely done. This data is actually nice to have because I have recently wondered what kind of render times others have been getting with this feature.

I find that the render times are far too long when I use AO, so I just use Area Lamps and spots for now :slight_smile:

Thanks for the renders and the .blend. :slight_smile:

I will see if I can post my render times and specs soon.

dante

4

Hi, I ran the test, same settings as were in the Blend file when I opened it.

Render time 11mins 45 secs on a Win NT4 workstation with 260MB ram, no idea of cpu size I’m afraid.

Rendered with BF Blender20040405.

Click here to view render

I couldn’t see any smoothing issues as you mentioned when this rendered, the sphere’s seemed to be nice and smooth, everything is a lot darker than your 3rd render though(the same 16 sample version I rendered.) don’t know if you did any post work but this is straight from Blender.

There is unfortunately some degradation in the colours from jpeg compression.

Sonix.

5

mh

i see quit often smoothing errors! most times they are related to the mesh so you can see actualy a concentration of ao points along edges!!!

claas