Hello there, I'm looking for a detailed explanation of how to combine the regular as well as somewhat unusual aov's to reconstruct the beauty, but I'm currently not really finding anything of use in the documents. Perhaps I have looked in the wrong place? Or, does such an overview not exist? I am thinking along the lines of something like this page here: https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/?guid=arnold_for_maya_aovs_am_AOVs_for_Image_Compositing_html [help.autodesk.com]
So, basically a way to look at how the aov's go together mathematically.

I know that most aov's are additive, but Karma can also very easily output aov's named something like "shadow", "unshadowed", albedo etc. which, presumably, are not just straight additive aovs. And, of course, most of the time there are certain "sets" of aov's that are meant to be added together vs. other sets.

Can anyone point me to a good source of information for this?

Thanks,
Dag

Dougie0047
Hello there, I'm looking for a detailed explanation of how to combine the regular as well as somewhat unusual aov's to reconstruct the beauty, but I'm currently not really finding anything of use in the documents. Perhaps I have looked in the wrong place? Or, does such an overview not exist? I am thinking along the lines of something like this page here: https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/?guid=arnold_for_maya_aovs_am_AOVs_for_Image_Compositing_html [help.autodesk.com]
So, basically a way to look at how the aov's go together mathematically.

I know that most aov's are additive, but Karma can also very easily output aov's named something like "shadow", "unshadowed", albedo etc. which, presumably, are not just straight additive aovs. And, of course, most of the time there are certain "sets" of aov's that are meant to be added together vs. other sets.

Can anyone point me to a good source of information for this?

Thanks,
Dag

Don't use shadowed and unshadowed. That is overkill for most productions.

Simplest is to do it additive:
direct diffuse + indirect diffuse
+direct specular + indirect specular
+direct emission + indirect emission
+direct volume + indirect volume
+coat
+sss


There's another slighty more complex way in which you divide beaty by albedo, so you get raw light. So you can basically tweak and albedo separately. I can dig it out and give diagram bit later.

@bogdana Thanks for your answer. Yes, so putting together all the additive passes is fine and dandy. And staying away from shadowed/unshadowed is also fine. However, I would like to understand how they are designed to work still. But I cannot find any resources on it at the moment. The albedo I would very much like to use however. And I've tried dividing the albedo from the combined diffuse for example. But, mostly, you do not get what you expect, which is just the raw light. There always seem to be some residue of color in the result, and that should not really be the case. So, how are we meant to use the albedo pass? And, why is there only one albedo pass easily available? For what is it meant for? Just the diffuse or more? Other rendering engines offer albedo for more than just the diffuse. So, this still makes me curious.
Does anyone has good info on this?

Cheers,
Dag

Dougie0047
And, why is there only one albedo pass easily available? For what is it meant for?

20.5.418
Added 'A' (albedo) event type in light path expression so that it's possible to write out albedo AOV based on specific path or BSDF component