Grainy looking ambient occlusion maps in xNormal
polycounter lvl 7
Hello again, I've posted about this before and thought I fixed it but the problem is still persisting, having issues getting good quality AO maps in xNormal when using only low-poly models (as opposed to projecting detail from a highpoly to lowpoly model). No matter the settings I tweak the ambient occlusion bake looks bad when multiplied onto the mesh's texture.
http://imgur.com/a/5GW7k <-- Album showing the issues
I understand some of my UV stacking could have issues, but it looks bad even on geometry that is totally flat and not overlapping in any way. Is there a way to get nicer looking shadows that I don't feel the need to manually blur out to fix? I've tried AO planes/cages/hemispheres and the results are the same. Thanks for reading!
http://imgur.com/a/5GW7k <-- Album showing the issues
I understand some of my UV stacking could have issues, but it looks bad even on geometry that is totally flat and not overlapping in any way. Is there a way to get nicer looking shadows that I don't feel the need to manually blur out to fix? I've tried AO planes/cages/hemispheres and the results are the same. Thanks for reading!
Replies
As for the horrible artifacts: Those look like its shading along some lines of geo, which suggests things aren't perfectly planar there, or at least the normals across those polys aren't.
Why not just project from a high poly?
These images are from the most recent bake, it is still 2048x2048, has 1024 rays and now 2x anti-aliasing, and it still looks off. And the edges are shown in picture 2, it's rectangular and should be flat, there's just some edges that connect to the corner because n-gons. Both images have the same AO map, it's just in the second one it's multiplied onto a darker BG color and it brings out the artifacts.
Lastly can't project from a high poly because there isn't one, it's just a low-poly frame for a freezer.
Also, just a thought, but why bake AO on this in the first place? If its just a freestanding, rectilinear prop, even a high quality AO map is going to be fairly simple anyway. It would be faster and more easily controlled using photoshopped gradients.