Exclude ambient shadow map from animations

[[frl]myke 15]

Ok, here's the problem. I have a vehicle for which i've baked ambient shadow map (_as) in Blender. So far it works good but one problem arised. Of course the wheels were partially in shadowed area while baking so they have a partial shadow map now on the AS texture. Problem is, as the wheels turn, the shadow map turns aswell which obviously looks wrong. Although i guess to know the answers (remove wheel parts from AS map) i would like to know if there is a way to stop AS map rotating with the wheels.

Any input welcome

[jagheterjan 10]

Easy - hide everything that shouldn't be in the bake and only then bake a (separate) ambient occlusion map so you have only the moving parts present in the map that would otherwise be shadowed by static parts of the mesh. Then do another bake for all the parts that were hidden in the previous bake. This way, you can layer the various AO maps in GIMP or whatever image editing software you use and better control the effect. Or 'explode' the mesh for the bake - a little more fiddly to set up, but you only have to render once. In 3ds max, you can also use Material IDs to separate objects within a mesh, but I have no idea if this is true for Blender as well, never really worked with it.

[[frl]myke 15]

Not quite sure if i got everything correct but as far as i can follow, at the very end i will still have a static AS texture which will rotate together with the wheel. Just the way to get there is different.

[jagheterjan 10]

Thats correct, but the AS map will not have shadows on the wheels that are cast from the main vehicle body, so the undesirable effect you've describted is gone.

If you do not have a hipoly wheel to bake from, then it'd probably be too much effort for very little effect and just deleting the wheels out of the AS map would be the way forward. In any case, you cannot stop the AS map from rotating with the wheel.

[[frl]myke 15]

In any case, you cannot stop the AS map from rotating with the wheel.

That's what i feared to hear. *sigh*

Then be it, i'll just remove that part from the AS. No biggie but i would have liked to keep it.

Thx for your help, jagheterjan.

[Synide 0]

This is a super shader .rvmat correct?

Try just pointing the AS map from the .rvmat at a 'new' UV map, one without the poly's for the wheels in it and leave the other textures for normalmap, dt, spec, etc., pointing at the current uvmap with the wheel poly's in it.

Give it a go. Should be fine.

-Sy