AO Smoother in xnormal?

purehilarity

Hello, Was wondering how to get a smoother result with my AO bakes in xnormal. Is it just an AA issue? There don't seem to be many settings. I don't think it's related to the shape of the mesh, because you can see it on a flat plane here.  The lines are sort of streaky. I'd just been popping it in Photoshop and blurring it but seems like bad practice.

Edit: I'm not a smart man... didn't even notice the rollout for the AO Sorry gaiz. Can I delete thread?

FourtyNights

You'll need to increase the value for rays. Something like 1024 to 2048 is a decent setting for a good quality.

cookedpeanut

As above, also you may be better off down-scaling a larger map than anti-aliasing one. Trust me, 1000+ samples takes donkeys years to render... Could turn off back-face rays or whatever it's called, although you probably won't notice much of a speed difference.

Joopson

I almost never bake above 512 rays, since it just takes way too long on a AA2x 2048 or larger. Turning dithering on or off can change the way the map feels, and depending on the need, I do switch back and forth. Dithering off leaves stairsteps in the shading, while turning dithering on tries to lessen those by adding noise. Sometimes I notice the noise is more noticeable than the steps.

EdHanley

I agree with CookedPeanut, I normally scale down a larger map. However I find that using the CUDA renderer instead of the default bucket gives really nice results. However some graphics cards don't like it. I have a 770 at work and just crashes but a 580 at home and works fine. A 4k AO on CUDA using my 580 takes about 45 mins vs about 4 hours on default bucket too.

Ed

Joopson

Hm, what kind of settings do you use, @EdHanley? I can't imagine waiting even 15 minutes for an AO bake, personally, let alone 4 hours. Doubt my computer could handle it either.  Is the quality difference your settings give you that noticeable to warrant such a long bake time?

JedTheKrampus

If you get the projection kinks ironed out ahead of time with a normal map there's no reason why you couldn't just aim for an 8 hour bake and sleep through it.

EdHanley

I just use the default settings and have 256 rays. My CPU is pretty old, that's why the default bucket takes so long on mine i think. I have a Q6600!!  

Ed