With the new Inverted Ambient Occlusion setting in Cinema 4D R18, you can take a simple concept and get wildly different results. In the render settings, when you turn on Ambient Occlusion to get more realistic shadows, there is now a checkbox for "Invert Direction," which will push AO shadows inside of objects, instead of creating contact shadows outside of objects. This can be useful for mimicking sub-surface scattering without blowing up render time, and also to create some pretty unique results when you tweak the color and render settings.
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To take a deeper look at new features in Cinema 4D R18, be sure to check out some of these additional articles focusing on other updates and new features for R18:
• Top 5 New Features of R18
• MoGraph updates and new Effectors for R18
• Voronoi Fracture, a New MoGraph Feature
• Working with the new Thinfilm Shader
• How to use the new Parallax Bump Map Feature
• Using the new Shadow Catcher for 3D Compositing
• Working with the new Substance Materials Workflow
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