New SG_AMBOCC Node

[Gerardo]

With better shading, more features, control and nodal flexibility:

http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/...ch/AmbOccNode/

have fun!



Gerardo

[Tartiflette]

Thanks for pointing out, Gerardo !

Waiting now for the Mac release !


Regards,
Laurent aka Tartiflette

[Alien]

thx for sharing, interesting node

[PentamiterBeast]

Superb. I had checked and found that the ol SGAmbOcc shader rendered faster than the new occlusion node in 9, so to be able to use it wthin nodes workflow is gonna be very helpful, thanks.

[mlon]

nice, thnx sebastian and gerardo !


mlon

[evenflcw]

Very nice. The directional mode looks quite interesting. Thanks!

[Gerardo]

Please guys, thanks to Sebastian Goetsch (he is the genious behind so useful tool)

Btw, a way to control the effect strength is with a gradient:



this alows us to have total control over the occlusion shading. An example with a nice model from Aristomenis Stirbas:



The gradient can be useful to colored the effect as well:



Which looks like this:



If we want the effect interacting with shadows and other external shaders we can connect the node to Diffuse channel and the gradient output color to Color channel (the pow tool is a Denis tip and it may be very useful here for adjusting the diffusion effect independently):







Gerardo

[Gerardo]

The SG_AmbOcc node it's getting even better! Sebastian Goetsch has made a really Brilliant job with this new version:

http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~goetsch/AmbOccNode

The new Color output offer us several new possibilities: Do you remember my gradient setup? Well, we don't need it anymore (at least for occlusion effect, but you might to want experiment with different blending modes to fake indirect lighting too). We don't have to set up gradient by gradient now; seeing that the SGAmbOcc node do this automatically! It seems that it pick up the color or texture of our surfaces by taking into account its shading and it colors the occlusion effect (ambient or directional mode) with these tonalities. Thank you very much Sebastian!

Notice, it not only works as a faster and flexible option than BgRadiosity, it also simulate some kind of GI by coloring surfaces with the colors of surrounding objects. The tool works directly in color channel or diffuse shading (surface root), but you may want to experiment other configurations for extra control:



I didn't need to set up any gradient for any object in the previous pic, just a single nodal configuration that works for all objects on the floor (it may have several other configurations for this):






Other very useful feature is the new Reflection mode. The quality of the effect by default is far better than LW blurred reflections and render times are faster . We can design different types of softreflections by diminishing render times and improving the quality:



The node setup for the water in this pic was very simple:



without bump maps:



Notice the soft_reflection effect is working with textured environments and volumetric effects (fog and lights)



The other excellent feature is Refraction mode. We can simulate soft refractions in a faster and more controlable way. At this moment the only limitation is avoid doubled sided polygons or setups where we have polygons pointing toward inside and outside in the geometry at the same time (we can use the useful Celshader's tip to specify the polygon side by using the spot_info tool).



Btw, the effect works also with objects inside objects!




Hope to see more experiments and nodal configurations



Gerardo

[Red_Oddity]

Can i chime in by saying...wow...that is a very very cool node.

[Jim M]

Lw 9.3 - Built in Occlusion shaders pumped into gradients produce a much faster result for me. Also SG occlusion produces render errors it seems.

[Gerardo]

Render times depend on how we use it. SG_AmbOcc is not a regular occlusion node, we can get a lot of effects with it. For simple AO passes, SG_AmbOcc can be a bit faster and produce softer and more natural results (The better spreading of OcclusionII is equivalent only to 70° of SG_AmbOcc, and results are dark).



(same number of rays for both cases)

When we enable Full Surface Evaluation, SG_AmbOcc not only behaves as an occlusion shader but it also simulates local bounce effect (equivalent to 3 bounces).




(MC is not Interpolated)

Here there's a simple scene, you can check these differences and try other nodal configurations.

We can get soft refractions effects with customized parameters as well:



This is the setup to add that fresnel effect:



We have more control over the 'look' and render times for soft reflections too:



And even more, we can fake soft shadows more faster than with area lights and the occlusion effect can also take into account transparency. This thread could be interesting as well.

In some scenarios however, OcclusionII can be faster (backdrop occ for distant scene for example). But the good thing is we can get the best of both tools

Btw, I haven't had errors here. Can you report these render errors please?



Gerardo

[Jim M]

Thanks for that Gerardo. I will try to recreate the render errors. It could quite easily be user error.

[tobian]

The last time I used this shader (maybe not the latest one) it didn't work with Fprime and often had problems with multi-threaded rendering, which kind of killed it's usefulness for me unfortunately. I mailed Sebastian about it and he recognised it as a known bug. I'm not sure what version that was and if it's since been fixed, but for the moment I'm making do with the pomm occlusion node, which is very nice, albeit without quite so diverse a feature set!

I'll check what versions I have in the morning, and compare it with the latest one etc.

[Jim M]

Works with FPrime here.

[tobian]

worked fine in fprime here too - then I did an fprime-render - and GAH noise... everywhere Still have to check to release version hehe