Ambient Occlusion OpenGL
Learn about OpenGL-specific ambient occlusion when rendering in VRED.
For additional information on using Ambient Occlusion, see the following:
Video captions: To get feedback in your render window, you need to activate Wireframe in your toolbar. Ambient Occlusion describes the shadowing and self-shadowing of objects. VRED uses pre-calculated ambient occlusion to simulate shadows. Open the Bake Light and Shadows module using Scene > Bake Light and Shadows and select the geometry. Select the preferred quality from the presets in the Direct Illumination section. The better the quality, the more samples being calculated. Now, start by using the standard setting, Medium Quality. Through Minimum and Maximum Distance, you can define the area in which the ambient occlusion has to be calculated. For vehicle calculations, we suggest between 1 and 3000 mm. Start the calculation by selecting Calculate All. OpenGL will immediately show the calculated shadow. Ambient Occlusion in VRED is based on vertices. This means that the shadow quality depends on the geometry density. Open the Subdivision section. Activate subdivisions with Enable and select the preferred quality. The better the quality, the purer the geometry gets tessellated. First of all, start by using the standard setting, Low Quality. Start a new calculation for the ambient occlusion. Now, there will be subdivisions in the geometry where necessary. Now check the result. If the tessellation wasn’t clean enough, redo the calculation with a higher quality setting. You can also calculate the ambient occlusion for a selected group. Before you start the calculation, please note that any surrounding geometry will be included in the calculation, so hide it. You should also set the Opacity mode to Solid, if you use a shadow material on the ground. Otherwise, the ground will be regarded as transparent, and the geometry will be dimmed down. Deactivate the subdivisions calculation and start the calculation. Deactivate Wireframe with the toolbar and close the Bake Light and Shadows module. Examine the ambient occlusion in the Ambient Occlusion Rendering mode. Note that VRED takes care of glass, automatically. This means that glass covered objects are correctly calculated automatically.