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P3D AO effects/mental ray/render to texture

delivery guy

delivery guy

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unitedstates
What is the best lighting to use for AO effects?

Camera (What type)
or
Use advanced lighting.

Advanced lighting makes the bottom of the fuselage too bright and the edges too dark.
Camera i am getting no difference. But i am now trying (area lights/shadows as points) under production rendering mode.

i am using this tutorial..http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/ambient-occlusion-tutorial-max-2012.425097/

But it uses advanced lighting and i am not getting good results. It may be outdated so i could use a better tutorial.
 
I've been getting good results with Bill's tutorial with the default lighting. I did play around with the settings in the Render To Texture\Selected Element Unique Settings.
Samples: 220
Spread: 0.8
Max Dist.: 10.0
Falloff: 1.0
These settings gave me some nice results.
 
Too bright and too dark on edges. Also the bottom of the fuselage is just as bright as the top or sides.
The only area that looks good is the wheel wells.

What is wrong with this advanced lighting?

FUSELAGEAmbient%20Occlusion%20_MR_.jpg
 
Ok i now figured out that the dark edges are black because there are parts that cover that area. So like other AO programs it paints it dark if covered. i need to make another scene and weld all parts that share the same texture.

I think i will try using lights as i want the bottom of the fuselage darker.

Update:
You can use lights or you can make a plane for the ground and this makes the bottom darker. Now i have a nice AO effect. i think i got the hang of it now.
 
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It does take a little figuring out. I didn't start baking the exterior until the entire model was assembled and gear extended. Personally I wouldn't use anything to cast more shadow on the bottom of the aircraft since it's viewed mostly in the air.
Adding extra lights is better used in the VC or cabin to represent internal lamps or light coming in from the windows.
If you keep each object's AO as a separate layer on your texture sheet you can adjust the opacity to lighten or copy the layer to darken.
 
Paul Domingue said:
It does take a little figuring out. I didn't start baking the exterior until the entire model was assembled and gear extended. Personally I wouldn't use anything to cast more shadow on the bottom of the aircraft since it's viewed mostly in the air.
Adding extra lights is better used in the VC or cabin to represent internal lamps or light coming in from the windows.
If you keep each object's AO as a separate layer on your texture sheet you can adjust the opacity to lighten or copy the layer to darken.
Click to expand...

I agree dispite the fact hat I do use some AO bake.... but only as a "Lighten" layer, since I think it's too dark and overwelming on it's own... creates a little effect, I think it's no overkill that way:

2015-12-23_16-36-57-961%20copy_zpsdxe56sok.jpg


hardly noticable but still it's there and (IMO) adding to the look of the aircraft. Just my 2 cents worth.
 
Since the wing is a separate texture i am not sure it will use the shadow from the wing to the fuselage. If i add the wing in the scene will it add it's shadow?
Also using the default lighting i found out it has 1 in the upper left and 1 in the lower right and this is why i use lights for all parts. I used 2 "target spot" lights above shinning down at an angle so the sides are not too dark. Then i use 1 photometric "free light" below the scene to add just a little light from the bottom. I move it until i get the result i am happy with.

I also started using 4096 for textures so i do not have to split the fuselage in 2 parts. Always trying to make my work a bit easier and increase quality. The rivets on my actual texture look amazing on this scale. And i use Subtractive for the AO layer so i can keep this on the top layer. This pic is just the AO layer.

But i just noticed I forgot to map the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer. My original texture has the bottom section ready. So i need to re map then create another AO render.
FUSELAGEAmbient%20Occlusion%20_MR_2.jpg
 
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delivery guy said:
Since the wing is a separate texture i am not sure it will use the shadow from the wing to the fuselage. If i add the wing in the scene will it add it's shadow?
Also using the default lighting i found out it has 1 in the upper left and 1 in the lower right and this is why i use lights for all parts. I used 2 "target spot" lights above shinning down at an angle so the sides are not too dark. Then i use 1 photometric "free light" below the scene to add just a little light from the bottom. I move it until i get the result i am happy with.

I also started using 4096 for textures so i do not have to split the fuselage in 2 parts. Always trying to make my work a bit easier and increase quality. The rivets on my actual texture look amazing on this scale. And i use Subtractive for the AO layer so i can keep this on the top layer. This pic is just the AO layer.

But i just noticed I forgot to map the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer. My original texture has the bottom section ready. So i need to re map then create another AO render.
FUSELAGEAmbient%20Occlusion%20_MR_2.jpg
Click to expand...
All the objects including the wings need to be there if you want them to cast shadows. How you want the different surfaces illuminated is up to you. I try to have the same amount of lighting all around. You should try to have all the main surfaces look like the sides of the fuselage in your image. The bottom is to dark IMO. I'm not on my computer right now but when I am I'll send you an image of the AO I made for the Mallard for comparison.
 
Paul Domingue said:
All the objects including the wings need to be there if you want them to cast shadows. How you want the different surfaces illuminated is up to you. I try to have the same amount of lighting all around. You should try to have all the main surfaces look like the sides of the fuselage in your image. The bottom is to dark IMO. I'm not on my computer right now but when I am I'll send you an image of the AO I made for the Mallard for comparison.
Click to expand...

Yep adding the other parts adds the shading!

If i use the default lighting the shading on the sides of the fuselage are not even since the default light comes from the side. So adding 2 light on top fixes that issue. But i noticed if i put a light on the bottom the render shows that amount of light but the image does not. It still is bright. So the only way to get the image like i posted above is to add a large plain below. Most of the time an aircraft is flying up right so the bottom of the aircraft needs to be slightly darker. And by adding Subtractive it makes the decals look realistic and not cartoon with solid colors. I seen your images you sent and i just prefer to have the bottom slightly darker as this is what the real sun would do.

But i ran into another issue. The bottom of the horizontal stabilizer is not dark because the plain is too far away. I really do not want to use a plain. I want the image to export like the render window. But for some reason the render looks perfect and the image is different. Any reason it's doing this? How can i tell the render to image to use my custom lights? Seems odd how it does not use the render preview.
 
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Solved the issue. Now i can use 2 lights above and 1 light below with no plain.

I do exactly the same setup but in the render to texture setup i click Add and instead of using "Ambient Occlusion (MR)" I select "BlendMap". You still get the exact same baked export but it uses the custom lights.

To create my base layer i use "SpecularMap". This exports solid black. The i convert it to almost solid white. I use padding 3 rather than 2 so it a bit wider on all edges.

BlendMap
FUSELAGEBlendMap.jpg

Combined with actual texture.
FUSELAGE.jpg
 
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Puzzling! You're making an AO render by not using AO? It's too early on Xmas for me...
 
delivery guy said:
Solved the issue. Now i can use 2 lights above and 1 light below with no plain.

I do exactly the same setup but in the render to texture setup i click Add and instead of using "Ambient Occlusion (MR)" I select "BlendMap". You still get the exact same baked export but it uses the custom lights.

To create my base layer i use "SpecularMap". This exports solid black. The i convert it to almost solid white. I use padding 3 rather than 2 so it a bit wider on all edges.

BlendMap
FUSELAGEBlendMap.jpg

Combined with actual texture.
FUSELAGE.jpg
Click to expand...
I like your texture sheet, it looks very well thought out. In variance of shading I'm more inclined to keep it even because most of my aircraft can fly inverted and the FSX environment seems to do a good job of darkening what ever side of the aircraft is facing earthward (don't know if that's a real word but it sounds good). :)
hairyspin said:
Puzzling! You're making an AO render by not using AO? It's too early on Xmas for me...
Click to expand...
Did Santa bring you what you wanted?
We're both just learning this and experimenting and it's nice to have someone to bounce this stuff off of. Trying to understand all the aspects of texture baking in Max 2015 is quite daunting. Hopefully some bakery chief will read this post and throw us hungry dogs a bone. ;)
 
Paul Domingue said:
Did Santa bring you what you wanted?
Click to expand...

Same as last year, different colour, thanks!

AO isn't about how you light the scene as I understand it, it's about how light is attenuated close to the internal corners and junctions of geometry. Bill's tut doesn't use lights at all and the results are blended with the diffuse texture using the Multiply operator in PS iirc - I'm not at my PC to check right now.

Texture baking per se is complex enough in Max 2008, I dread to think how many additional options are in version 2015, but I'm always open to instruction!
 
hairyspin said:
Puzzling! You're making an AO render by not using AO? It's too early on Xmas for me...
Click to expand...

I did some more testing tonight and i find that although the BlendMap is designed to show all components and it does in fact bake the texture the quality is not as good as AO (MR). So i think i am going to forget using this method and work on making the AO (MR) work with more darkness on the bottom side.

I found that using a single skylight makes the light even on both sides of the fuselage. And when i add a plain below the model i get a slight darker bottom. This seems to be my best result so far.

I also noticed i lost good lighting on the rudder. Now i can't see all the ribs.

More info on the these 2 types of elements for render to texture.
  • BlendMap
    A Blend map is like a Complete map, except that all its components, not just shadows, are optional.
AO_FUSELAGE.jpg
 
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hairyspin said:
I'm not going to be at my PC for a while, but found this explanatory article quite helpful. Since you're using Max 2015, you might be interested to know of a free quick AO script for Max 2010 and above. I found it mentioned in this article.
Click to expand...

I already came across 2 of those links and some other sites i found some good info as well. Thanks.

explanatory article Just like the picture of the boat from this post my aircraft is amphibian and i need a dark bottom as well. So you can see they added a surface below to get the dark bottom side. So i think i am all set as i did the same.
 
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