Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
the value
1.000
input socket instead shows as a background because the light rays
shot from the camera directly hit the sky.
There is more...
Just after the
Surface
tab, in the
World
window, there is the
Ambient Occlusion
(AO) tab.
AO
is a lighting method used to emphasize the shapes or the details of
a surface, based on how much a point on that surface is occluded by the nearby
surfaces. Although not exactly the same thing,
AO
can replace, in some cases, the
Global Illumination effect. For example, to render interiors having fast and noise-free
results,
AO
is a cheap way to get an effect that looks a bit like indirect lighting.
There is a checkbox to enable AO along with the following two sliders:
•
Factor
: Used for the strength of the AO. A value of
1.00
is equivalent to
a white World.
•
Distance
: Is the distance from a shading point to the trace rays. Shorter
distance emphasizes nearby features, a longer distance makes it take ob-
jects further away into account.
The
Ambient Occlusion
feature is only applied to the
Diffuse BSDF
component of
a material.
Glossy
or
Transmission BSDF
components are not affected. Instead,
the transparency of a surface is taken into account. For example, a half transparent
surface will only half occlude the other surfaces.
