This page gives information on the VRayAO render element.

Overview


VRayAO render element creates an ambient occlusion effect in the scene. The render element consists of a VRayExtraTex render element with a VRayDirt texture loaded in it.

The background is calculated with unoccluded color by design. You can use compositing with the V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB).

 

 

 

Parameters


VRayVFB – When enabled, the render element appears in the VFB.

Deep output – Specifies whether to include this render element in deep images.

Denoise – Specifies whether to denoise this render element.

Consider for antialiasing – When enabled, antialiasing is considered where possible.

Affect matte objects – Sets whether to include matte objects when generating the render element. A matte object is an object that has been assigned a Wrapper Material or VRayObjectProperties with the Matte surface option enabled.

Ignore invisible objects – When enabled, VRayAO takes into account the opacity of the occluding objects. This can be used, for example, if you want to calculate ambient occlusion from opacity-mapped trees, etc. When disabled (by default), occluding objects are always assumed to be opaque. Note that working with correct opacity is slower, since, in that case, VRayAO must examine and evaluate the material on the occluding objects.

Enabling Ignore invisible objects option also respects the Invisible parameter of V-Ray lights, causing them to be excluded from the rendering calculations.

Radius map – Determines the amount of area (in scene units) where the VRayAO effect is produced. You can also use a texture to control the radius. The texture intensity is multiplied by the radius to calculate the final radius at a given surface point. If the texture is white at a given surface point, the full radius value is used. If the texture is black, a radius of 0.0 is used.

Distribution – Forces the rays to gather closer to the surface normal. The effect is that the dirt area is being narrowed closer to the contact edges. For ambient occlusion, set this parameter to 1.0 to get distribution similar to the ambient lighting on a diffuse surface.

Falloff – Controls the speed of the transition between occluded and unoccluded areas.

Subdivs – Controls the number of samples that V-Ray takes to calculate the VRayAO effect. Lower values render faster but produce a more noisy result.

Exclude – Specifies a list of objects to be excluded from the VRayAO render element.

Affected by – Specifies a list of objects that affect the calculation of the VRayAO render element. Excluded objects are considered "invisible" for the calculations of the VRayAO - they don't produce the effect over other objects.

 

 

Compositing Example


In this example, the original RGB render is blended with the Ambient Occlusion channel using the Multiply mode. This results in heavier, more underlined shadows around all the object edges.