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Question about AoA's Advanced Ambient Light

RenderPretenderRenderPretender Posts: 1,041
in The Commons

Hello -

As a user with limited computer power, and also due to wanting lighting uniformity across serial images, I am a fan of using the AoA Advanced Ambient Light alone for it's soft appearance. However, I have noticed that when two subjects are close together, such as faces, the lighting is markedly diminished in intensity. I have studied the user guide on AoA's site, and have tried things such as setting it to light everything uniformly, and increasing the intensity, but those things are of limited use. Introducing another directional light helps, but ruins the lighting uniformity across multiple images. Suggestions welcome!

Repeat: I cannot use Iray or any very resource intensive lighting, other than perhaps UE.

Comments

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,095

    The issue you are running into is a feature, not a bug -- Ambient Occlusion. It's a great way of handling lighting in a simpler way that looks more realistic than just lighting everything evenly, and basically it calculates based on surfaces being near other surfaces. So, like, the corners of a room is less lit than the walls and floor.

    Thankfully, this is very easy to shut off!

    In Parameters > Occlusion tab, set AO Strength to 0. Done.

     

  • RenderPretenderRenderPretender Posts: 1,041
    edited January 2017
    timmins.william said:

    The issue you are running into is a feature, not a bug -- Ambient Occlusion. It's a great way of handling lighting in a simpler way that looks more realistic than just lighting everything evenly, and basically it calculates based on surfaces being near other surfaces. So, like, the corners of a room is less lit than the walls and floor.

    Thankfully, this is very easy to shut off!

    In Parameters > Occlusion tab, set AO Strength to 0. Done.

    Sadly, though, that kills all the shadows. Rats.

    timmins.william said:

     

     

    Post edited by RenderPretender on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,095

    I'm confused, then, because it generates semirealistic shadows. If you have a lot of ambient illumination and two faces are close to each other, the heads 'shade' one another.

    So... what's the problem?

     

  • RenderPretenderRenderPretender Posts: 1,041
    timmins.william said:

    I'm confused, then, because it generates semirealistic shadows. If you have a lot of ambient illumination and two faces are close to each other, the heads 'shade' one another.

    So... what's the problem?

     

    Well, when I tried turnng occlusion off altogether, ALL of the shadow disappeared, leaving the image flat and static. Perhaps I'll just have to turn the light intensity up as high as practicable and leave occlusion on.

  • DaWaterRatDaWaterRat Posts: 2,885

    Shouldn't need to turn up the light, just add another one (or a linear point light) at a low intensity just in front of the character's faces.  With a short fall off.

    I use that trick often when a character's face isn't lit well enough for my liking.

  • RenderPretenderRenderPretender Posts: 1,041
    DaWaterRat said:

    Shouldn't need to turn up the light, just add another one (or a linear point light) at a low intensity just in front of the character's faces.  With a short fall off.

    I use that trick often when a character's face isn't lit well enough for my liking.

    Yup, I use the LPL trick sometimes. Forgot about that. It's better than using two Ambient lights, I think, because then you can over-light the rest of the scene. Thank you.

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