Transparency, shadows, and AO?

[bendingpixels]

Hi, in this image, the plexiglass that is on the front of the machine comes out dark. It looks like Ambient Occulsion. The object is a few units off the surface of the metal. Not touching. I have an Octane object tag on the plexiglass and it's set to shadow visibility to "off". That definitely made the transparent object brighter, but it's still got AO, I think.

How can I correct this? In the C4D render I would add a compositing tag and tell the object not to be seen by AO. I've looked all thru but don't see that in Octane.

Thanks!!

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
since DL AO is not unbiased, specular materials tend to be more darker than in other kernels, even if they are not affected by AO, have you already tried to augment the specular depth value?
ciao beppe

[bendingpixels]

Thanks for the reply... the Spec depth was set to 8 for that render. I upped it to 16 and the material did get lighter. It never gets much better above 16 though. Even at 16, it still feels dark.

It's not crucial for this model. I can just move parts around to make the glass farther away from the metal. But how would I fix that if the distance was critical?

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
I forgot to mention that also the glossy depth has a great impact, here is the same example with different glossy depth:

DL-AO-16-2

DL-AO-16-4

DL-AO-16-8

but with this settings, the render become slower than Path Tracing, even with greater depth:

PT-16-16

my suggestion is to always use the Path Tracing kernel for products shots, with GI Clamp, Path termination power and coherent ratio is become more faster and efficient than Direct Light diffuse, and in some circumstances, even faster than AO. Just my two cents
ciao beppe

[bendingpixels]

Hey, thanks that helps my understanding a lot. I was already using Path Tracing since I've got scattering in the slurpee material. Hopefully I won't run into a situation where I have to have glass next to an object like that.