Ambient occlusion is a lighting technique that is commonly used to create soft shadows on objects. Ambient occlusion isn’t used to create the type of shadows that are cast from objects with a light shining directly on them. Instead, ambient occlusion generates the type of deep shadows that appear in the corners or creases of things, where it is hard for the light to reach.

Technically speaking, ambient occlusion is a global illumination technique. However, in common usage of the term it is often referred to as a cheap alternative to global illumination. To clear up any confusion, what most renderers refer to as “global illumination” is actually an amalgamation of several techniques such as radiosity, metropolis light transport, image-based lighting or photon mapping. The actual techniques used differ slightly from renderer to renderer. Some renderers include an ambient occlusion term as part of their global illumination calculation; others do not.

Like most global illumination techniques, ambient occlusion is dependent on the other geometry in the scene. Ambient occlusion on its own generates less realistic lighting than “full” global illumination. However, ambient occlusion is much faster and less complex to calculate than other methods which is why it is still popular among game developers and in production animation.

(Left) Without Ambient Occlusion. (Right) With Ambient Occlusion
Click for larger image.

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According to Information Week:

In the latest move, Sony Computer Entertainment, the unit responsible for the PlayStation, reduced the price of the SDK, which SCE calls the Reference Tool, to $10,250 in North America, $8,600 in Japan, and $11,250 in Europe. In addition, SCE said it would enhance the development environment by integrating programming tools from SN Systems. SN’s core tool is called ProDG.

Read the rest of the article here.

If you haven’t seen it yet, stop on by and check out “Sculpty Earth”! It’s a 3D topographic model of the Earth in Second Life that’s big enough to walk around on top of. It also has live cloud tracking. Nifty, eh? Now your friends can stand with you and point at their house even if they live on the other side of the world.

For all the details, read the write-up at New World Notes.

Johnny Lee shares a simple but clever approach for implementing finger tracking with the Wii remote:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU 350 292]

This plug-in collection adds a series of tools to AC3D that allow you to manage object pivots more effectively. With this plug-in set, you can: Set an object pivot to the highlighted vertex, zero the object pivot, rotate around the pivot instead of the centroid (numerically), or manually enter a pivot location. These functions are very helpful for setting up your model for animation or import into games.

Download the plugin. (Requires Windows XP, AC3D 6.2 or above.)