Still no official anmd simple answer......

[All Seeing One]

Can somebody please clarify whether or not Presto AO should display the "illumination" from lights on objects like walls etc.

Below is a prime example of what I mean, the same scene rendered using Presto MC has all the glow from ul;ighting etc. The AO version doesn't display any all that happens is emitters or lit themselves.

The uplighting in this case is a surface hidden behind the lit and painted with an emitter. The ceiling lighting tubes don't produce any lighting glow on surroundings either in AO, they just appear as lit objects in a dark frame.


Same wit hall lights, if I put a spotlight pointing at a wall it will render in MC but not in AO, is this a fault, is there a work around or a limitation of AO engine?!?!

[JQL]

I can see the spotlights in AO but I can also see that your Ambient Occlusion settings are greying out everything and fadiing out the spot light on the walls. Tinker with AO values for a fast render with a more natural and less greyed out look.

[All Seeing One]

Can you suggest which ones would best improve this scene? I can't "cheat" and remove walls to let in light etc as the final renders will be spherical.

[All Seeing One]

…...anyone?

This is why I'm thinking about going to Vray as at least it has support / solid community making helpful guides. All I need to do is make some interiors in Presto AO that have decent quality lighting and show up artificial lights but I've been asking for weeks and still have no solid answer. I email thea and still nothing.

[mrwip]

Hi All seeing one,

Thea AO is rendering all lights in the same way than MC, so you should be seeing your emitters. What are your AO parameters ?

Try with a tracing depth of 6, a diffuse of 1, extended tracing on, and AO ,distance 3, intensity 1.

[All Seeing One]

Hi Guys, rant over but I'm getting sooooo fed up with the lights. I don't expect to be great at it overnight but I do expect features to do something if selected otherwise how do you learn?
I've attached a latest image and I thank the previous post about AO as the scene isn't too bad generally now considering its only 300 passes but I still am not seeing those emitters to any real degree. the up lighting by the way is a thea emitter 150w fluorescent one but set to 500w and 50% efficiency. Do I have to set it at some stupidly high level to see it?

Oh by the way, I'm not using any external lighting at this stage. The project includes theatre seating layout of 300 chrome legged chairs so when I do that at 8000x4000 and 1000 passes my poor titan is going to sweat bullets hence trying to get render time vs results balance right.

If I can just get lights showing the above would do.

I'll take some more screen grabs and up load shortly.

[All Seeing One]

Here we go... lots of attachments.
First ones are my rendering settings etc.

[All Seeing One]

And these are the light I have in the scene:

So the ceiling lights are 4x tubes with emitter material applied and an ies light below.
Up lighting is a continuous "face" painted with an emitter.

[jc4d]

For a test try to crank the emitter values really high only to see if the emitters are doing something in AO mode, something like 100000 watts and 100 efficacy. Could be that the AO is more powerful than the emitters and that is the reason for not seeing the light from the emitters.

[All Seeing One]

Yes I was just about to try that as the above settings are getting close and I can see faint glow on the uplighter,