Ambient Occlusion and Indirect Lighting in Poser

kid_roleplay_d88bf2ef22

I've been trying to get the best of both worlds in a test render of mine in Poser 10. I like the look of the Indirect Lighting feature quite a bit and wish to use it. I also like the shadows that Ambient Occlusion from the light I set up casts on the "invisible ground," however, using Indirect Lighting disables the Ambient Occlusion from that light, creating a floating in space look that I don't want.

Is there any way to allow for both of these to work? I know there are Material room AO options that can be placed on things, but so far, I haven't gotten those to work right.

Lissa_xyz

Like this?

You need some sort of shadow casting spotlight. This one is primarily lit by a pure white environment dome, but has a spotlight @ the floor with raytraced shadows and aoc set to .7 (which doesn't seem to be doing a whole hell of a lot in this dinky little scene). There's also a spec light in front of her.

kid_roleplay_d88bf2ef22

Like that, yes. If it could place a shadow on absolutely nothing else as well, or very minimal in what it hits, that'd work wonders.

Pure white environment dome? What's that, and is it needed to reproduce the AO effects? Also, what way is the spotlight pointing, and how far away is it from the center, etc.? Also, AOC options on lights are turned off during IDL renders, unless there's some setting that prevents this somewhere.

Lissa_xyz

The dome may or may not be needed, I'm not sure. I always use some sort of a dome, whether it's IBL (idl off) or just an environment dome (idl on), so I've never looked into it. There are plenty of domes out there though, both free and paid.

The spotlight is pointing the same direction as the shadow, hence why the shadow's in that direction (see top down image below). Vikki is in the default loading location (xyz trans are all 0).

I use PP2014 and don't have the problem with AOC options being turned off w/ IDL on. I do know though that when you use IDL, you want to take all of the AO nodes out of your materials, otherwise you'll get overblown AO and longer render times since IDL produces AO anyways.

I'm still learning Poser lighting myself. Here's Nerd3D's aoc tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GZbHV7MJD4