As I have said earlier we are planning on finishing the establishing scene of the film first and leave it to render as we work on the rest. I have been playing about with the lighting for this scene and adding elements such as global illumination and ambient occlusion. Now I have been working out how to layer these attributes together once they have been rendered. Below is an example of a colour pass which has no indirect light bounce (final gather) or self shadowing (ambient occlusion):
and this is the AO pass:
Through some tests I have found that the best way to layer these would be to use After effects or Premiere to 'multiply' the AO ontop of the colour pass. The multiply action will erase all the white from the AO pass and keep the black, which will be the shadows.
