AO maps/Cavity maps

[igor73]

Hi,

Is there any use for Ambient occlusion maps and cavity maps in Octane ? How would i use them? Plug in to what node? At least for direct light render mode they should be of use?

[Rikk The Gaijin]

What's the point of using an AO map in a raytracer?

[gordonrobb]

An AO map is useful to 'multiply' with a colour/diffuse map, in certain circumstances. It can make things pop.

[igor73]

Aha interesting!. Will try that. You could also multiply a cavity map on the diffuse i guess?

[igor73]

Rick, i mostly use direct light render for speed. That is not PBR so AO map should be useful here i think?

[Rikk The Gaijin]

Direct Lighting already produces AO, so using an AO map is useless and redundant. If you want to use the AO map to multiply the diffuse, why not doing so in Photoshop?

[gordonrobb]

To me, it all comes down to how complete your textures are. For example, I'm looking at DDO. The textures that it produces, I would never use anything else on (AO, dirt maps etc) becuase it produces everything I need in the images it ouputs. However, if I'm just sticking either a flat image of a texture, or a procedural ino the diffuse for example, and you already have an AO map (that bit's important), it's a lot easier to set up, and quicker to render (I imagine) than getting it right elsewhere. It generally just makes things pop as I said. However, maybe this is all personal taste, or even bad practice on my part

[fatrobotsneedlove]

Stay the hell away from DDo for now. It is crippled with bugs and should still be in beta. Actually, the beta was more stable. Really promising software though when they get it working.

As Rikk said, you should never bake AO on top of your maps. Even game engines like unreal 4 use clean maps now. Basically, ao and cavity are now just really useful masks. For example, DDo uses them to mask out weathering effects like rust. I use them in Mari to help mask edge wear and dirt collection. But in octane they are just doubling up on top of what octane is already calculating. If you want more 'pop' in your occluded areas, change up your lighting. You will end up with a better result.

[gordonrobb]

Weirdly dDO works fine for me.

[glimpse]

tool is tool, neither good, nor bad..it's way more important, how You manage to use it.

Quixel suite wasn't working for me too, at beta stage on win7 hanged way to frequent (was impossible to do anything & I've tried clean install windows several time, used different drivers & other other builds that program rely on - no luck), though at the same time on my friend's PC with PS CC on win8 was stable enough.

in the end You have to expect such behaviour when its beta or even early development stage.


MARI is nice, though way to complex & too expensive for simple work..
pluss UDIMM doesn't work with Octane (or is it?, maybe something was changed?)