What is the special name for the special shadow any object creates in real life?

Jan_Scrapper

I once read an article about how the new Daz Studio helped with the area

Jan_Scrapper

I once read an article about how the new Daz Studio helped with the area that is made between anything and what it sits on.

This is a Poser render because of some special Poser materials I needed and you can see the two yellow circled figures have this special shadow.

You will see the others in red DO Not have this special shadow.

I fixed it in Paint Shop Pro, so no problem.

My question is:  What is the name of this special shadow???

NylonGirl

I think it's called ambient occlusion or something.

Jan_Scrapper

NylonGirl said:

I think it's called ambient occlusion or something.

Oh!!!  Excellent!!  Thank you so much!

Kitsumo

I think you're talking about Ambient Occlusion. It's one of those shortcuts that biased rendering engines used to create a more realistic look. I think it's fallen out of favor in recent years because physically based renderers aren't supposed to need it.

There are a few threads about making AO work in Iray.

3Diva

From your circles, it looks like you're talking about ground shadows? 

Edit - Hmmm Nevermind? Maybe Ambient Occlusion IS the right thing you're looking for? Since it does appear that there are some very light ground shadows already. Very odd.

Jan_Scrapper

Sorry, I ate lunch and took a long nap :)

Anyway, this morning after NylonGirl answered, I looked up  Ambient Occlusion.  Of course, I have seen you guys talk about it before.  I just never understood and had been meaning to look it up.

So, one of the definitions I found was:

"Where an object stops light."

Isn't that facinating!!!  I was outside on my patio looking at the furniture.  One wicker rocker was actually "stopping light" at the bottom of it's feet!!!

I am still amazed at Poser and Daz Studio!  I will NEVER take them for granted.  This 3d world is so wonderful with reflections and shadows and a million other things.

3Diva

Jan_Scrapper said:

Sorry, I ate lunch and took a long nap :)

Anyway, this morning after NylonGirl answered, I looked up  Ambient Occlusion.  Of course, I have seen you guys talk about it before.  I just never understood and had been meaning to look it up.

So, one of the definitions I found was:

"Where an object stops light."

Isn't that facinating!!!  I was outside on my patio looking at the furniture.  One wicker rocker was actually "stopping light" at the bottom of it's feet!!!

I am still amazed at Poser and Daz Studio!  I will NEVER take them for granted.  This 3d world is so wonderful with reflections and shadows and a million other things.

Yeah, as far as lighting and shadows goes, Iray definitely seems to be more "physically accurate" than 3Delight. I'd recommend Iray if your computer can handle it, it does the ground shadowing and more natural ambient occlusion "automatically". 

That's a very cute render, by the way - the characters and colors are adorable. 

Paintbox

Actually Leonardo Da Vinci discusses it in his notebooks, and it is part of drawing classes usually. Ambient Occlusion is more a computer term in most cases to point to a render technique, as mentioned.

There also names for different parts of a shadow :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbra%2C_penumbra_and_antumbra

nonesuch00

Jan_Scrapper said:

Sorry, I ate lunch and took a long nap :)

Anyway, this morning after NylonGirl answered, I looked up  Ambient Occlusion.  Of course, I have seen you guys talk about it before.  I just never understood and had been meaning to look it up.

So, one of the definitions I found was:

"Where an object stops light."

Isn't that facinating!!!  I was outside on my patio looking at the furniture.  One wicker rocker was actually "stopping light" at the bottom of it's feet!!!

I am still amazed at Poser and Daz Studio!  I will NEVER take them for granted.  This 3d world is so wonderful with reflections and shadows and a million other things.

So that would mean no shadows because ambient occlusion has blocked all the light. Render engines and game engines in fact cull the polygons that are being hidden by ambient occlusion. So think of ambient occlusion more appropriately as being hidden from the eyes or a camera in the current viewport. Ambient occlusion is dynamic in 3D video game engines depending on the viewport location and direction. Shadows are static if the light souces and everything but the camera/viewport is static. 

I vaguely remember umbra, penumbra, and antumbra from 8th Grade science class but only when I bothered to look up the definition of a shadow myself so here is Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow

Jan_Scrapper

Divamakeup said:

Jan_Scrapper said:

Sorry, I ate lunch and took a long nap :)

Anyway, this morning after NylonGirl answered, I looked up  Ambient Occlusion.  Of course, I have seen you guys talk about it before.  I just never understood and had been meaning to look it up.

So, one of the definitions I found was:

"Where an object stops light."

Isn't that facinating!!!  I was outside on my patio looking at the furniture.  One wicker rocker was actually "stopping light" at the bottom of it's feet!!!

I am still amazed at Poser and Daz Studio!  I will NEVER take them for granted.  This 3d world is so wonderful with reflections and shadows and a million other things.

Yeah, as far as lighting and shadows goes, Iray definitely seems to be more "physically accurate" than 3Delight. I'd recommend Iray if your computer can handle it, it does the ground shadowing and more natural ambient occlusion "automatically". 

That's a very cute render, by the way - the characters and colors are adorable. 

Thank you so very much for the compliment!!!  I think the little girl turned out precious!!  That is K4, Toddler and my making her legs, feet, arms and hands as little as possible...there is distortion, but...

Thank you all for discussing this.  Shadows is a verl cool thing...I observe them in real life, too!