User Manual

AO Tips and Limitations
Transparency/Translucency: AO is designed to work with opaque objects. There are
known limitations with transparent receivers and those with transparent occluders. You
can work around some of these limitations by splitting out the transparent/translucent
objects into separate scenes and only computing AO on the opaque objects.
Particles: Because of the transparency/translucency limitations, do not use AO on
particles, unless the particles are solid opaque geometry. Anti-aliased edges are
another form of transparency, so they also cause problems with AO.
Supersampling: To render anti-aliasing with Ambient Occlusion, enable HiQ for the Z
and Normals pass in the Renderer 3D.
Viewer Dependence: AO methods work in viewer space, and the results are viewer
dependent. This means the amount of darkening can vary depending on the view
location, when in reality it should be constant. If at a point on an object the AO is 0.5,
moving the camera could change it to 0.4.
Baking of AO: The OpenGL UV renderer can be used to bake AO into the textures
on models.
Depth Blur [DBl]
The DepthBlur node
Depth Blur Node Introduction
The Depth Blur node is primarily used to create focal length or depth-of-field effects. It blurs
3D-rendered images based on included Z-channel values, and can also be used for general
per-pixel blurring effects through the Blur Channel controls.
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