Smooth AO

[F747fly]

So I baked my aircraft model (this is an old bake with little samples but still the idea is the same) but how do I get an actaul smooth one, so without those lines. I understand hose lines are edges, but I'd rather have a smooth one... So how should I go about doing that?

 

[dave hoeffgen]

What about a subsurf modifier, just for the AO baking process? With some edge crease at the doors and windows?
(Never tried it, was just an idea)

 

[F747fly]

darn that works...
Thanks dave. So here's the test I did for it....

here's a cylinder without subsurf:

and here it is with subsurf:

 

[dave hoeffgen]

now increase the subsurf's value and the edges will disappear completely

 

[DXtrans]

I don't usually work with planes, but sometimes in Blender I'll turn on "smooth shading" for a particular object (a light post for example) to make the AO bake smoother. It's not always perfect, but for my purposes it works great and it's very fast. Perhaps even a combination of subsurf and smooth shading would make things really smooth if you wanted that? Either way, here's the test I did with smooth shading turned off for the cylinder on the left and the opposite for the one on the right.

 

[F747fly]

Thanks DXtrans, I knew about smooth shading but still got the some result. Perhaps because I use an edge split modifier to crrate sharp edges at the doors and windows. Perhaps if I turn off the edge split modifier I would also get a smooth result.

 

[dave hoeffgen]

This is a ststic aircraft I make for a scenery.
I baked two versions of the AO: one with the original low poly model and one with a subsurf modifier with 4 subdivisions for rendering.

This is a comparison of the results:

As you see the subsurf caused some glitches around the door so I mixed the two versions for a better result.

 

[F747fly]

Hmmm... I still find this quite interesting. You see the "subsurf method" (let's call it that for now) does work but the subsurf modifier itself can form issues. I for instnce have windows, doors, cargodoors, all of that, cut out of the fuselage and well even an edge split modifier cannot help the result of that... So the subsurf modifier deffinitely works, but "complex models" cannot be done that way perhaps. For now I just left it to be, since I use a blend mode for this layer that hides modes lines anyway... However I did find another interesting method mentioned by Hector Lee, I'll quote him since he explained it just right:

I've also been having the problem of banding on cylindrical objects. Are you baking in Blender Render? I was and just decided to try baking in cycles and the effect seems been be minimised by quite a lot.

I've always been much of a fan of cycles render in favor of blender render, just because, and even texture baked stuff with that in the past. However Hector brings on an interresting thought, that comming to think of it would very well work, by doing the AO in Cycles. all you've got to note ofcourse is to set the samples up high to avoid grainyness, but you also have to do that for blender render. Haven't tried it out yet but it could very well work.