Ambient Occlusion(AO)is a way of faking shadows cheaply - and by cheap I mean in terms of rendering resources. It's not great in Poser, frankly.
IDL (InDirect Light) is their slightly more expensive (resources again) take on GI (Global Illumination) which is more 'real' insofar as it attempts to replicate what actual photons do. If you use IDL, the render engine will automatically turn off AO as they are not compatible.
Set up correctly, IDL will give you results an order of magnitude better than AO. The only reason for using the latter would be for animations, where, used with IBL (not IDL), it's 'good enough'.
(IDL (InDirect Light) is their slightly more expensive (resources again) take on GI (Global Illumination) which is more 'real' insofar as it attempts to replicate what actual photons do. If you use IDL, the render engine will automatically turn off AO as they are not compatible.
Set up correctly, IDL will give you results an order of magnitude better than AO. The only reason for using the latter would be for animations, where, used with IBL (not IDL), it's 'good enough'.
MisterPunch did it that way on,
Mon 8 Mar 2010, 14:17,
archived)