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What is ambient occlusion (AO)?
Ambient occlusion A method to approximate how much ambient light (light not coming from a specific direction) can hit a point on a surface. See in Glossary (AO) is a feature that simulates the soft shadows that occur in creases, holes, and surfaces that are close to each another.
What is ambient occlusion in video games?
In 2007, Crysis became one of the first games to include ambient occlusion. It was subsequently praised for its impressive graphics and lighting, leading to ambient occlusion being the watermark in which game lighting is usually modified. It even spawned a meme, ‘But can it run Crysis?’ stemming from graphics card reviews.
Can unity bake ambient occlusion into lightmaps?
See in Glossary, Unity can bake ambient occlusion into the lightmaps A pre-rendered texture that contains the effects of light sources on static objects in the scene. Lightmaps are overlaid on top of scene geometry to create the effect of lighting.
What is the difference between global illumination and ambient occlusion?
Global illumination and ambient occlusion are complementary effects; their task is to approximate the effect of real radiosity that occurs in real life in the multiple reflections of light and shading. GI models how light is bounced off of the surface onto another surface, whereas ambient occlusion approximates the shading effect from GI.
An Ambient Occlusion (AO) map creates soft shadowing, as if the model was lit without a direct light source, like on a cloudy day. Similar map types: Cavity Map, Crevice Map, Curvature map, Dirt Map. AO is usually baked from geometry because it is created using a non-realtime ray-casting lighting solution.
What is the difference between ambient occlusion map and lighting map?
The 2nd situation above is useful for real time engines running on older hardware, or lower spec devices like mobile phones. An ambient occlusion map is similar to a lightmap, but shouldn’t be confused with one. AO Maps are much more subtle than a lighting map and are actually used as well as lighting information at render time, not instead of.
What is screen space ambient occlusion (Aso)?
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion is a realtime AO method that does not require baking at all, but it requires a more recent graphics card and has some shading errors. Typically the AO map is blended into the metalness or specular map, instead of being stored as a unique texture, because this saves memory.