Neil Blevins >Ambient Occlusion
for 3ds Max and Brazil
level: all
How to create Ambient Occlusion
Ambient Occlusion is a calculation that takes any particular point and figures out how occluded this point is by the objects around it. Renderers such as Brazil do ambient occlusion as part of it's skylight calculation. A skylight is a light emitted from a sphere around your scene (like the sky outside), and then after the ambient occlusion value is calculated for a point, the light is multiplied by this value to give you the final light intensity at a particular spot. The result is an evenly lit scene with soft shadows (or darkening) in cracks and crevices and under objects, much like how shadows look on a cloudy day. Note in this example the plane cuts out any light coming from under the spherical object.
