Answered: AO maps blank/missing for megascan materials

Foursaken_Media

I noticed that when adding new materials (like brick, for ex) after adding an AO channel, they will no longer import their proper, specific AO maps... they are just blank gray overlays. In 1.8 as I recall, all of the megascan materials had their own unique AO maps that would multiply on top of your base AO. This also applies to the dynamask editor: the AO channel is just blank. 

Also speaking of AO, there is also no longer your base AO map in the stack at all, so you can't manipulate that either... makes working on AO maps in general quite difficult and time consuming.

Note that it does properly import the AO map with custom made materials, just not any of the stock megascans.  

Billy Lundevall

Hi, the reason the AO textures doesn't load is because they are not included. I don't know if this was the case earlier but if they were we have removed them along with the specular texture on most materials as they are rarely needed and slow things down as well as add size to the installer.

If you really need these, I can see if we can dig them up for you. But for most practical applications, they are not necessary and shadows should not be added to the diffuse texture as this is not how diffusion works.

Regards, Billy. 

Foursaken_Media

Billy Lundevall said:

Hi, the reason the AO textures doesn't load is because they are not included. I don't know if this was the case earlier but if they were we have removed them along with the specular texture on most materials as they are rarely needed and slow things down as well as add size to the installer.

If you really need these, I can see if we can dig them up for you. But for most practical applications, they are not necessary and shadows should not be added to the diffuse texture as this is not how diffusion works.

Regards, Billy. 

Interesting, thanks for responding Billy (they were present in 1.8 fwiw). 

Anyway, I understand that shadows/AO stays separate from diffuse, which is why it seems like it would be all that much more important to keep those maps for the separate AO pass... some megascan materials such as the cracked concrete and bricks have rather large details and holes that seem like they could really use that additional AO detail (I agree many materials definitely don't need an extra AO map, but some do imo). In our engine we multiply the AO only on the ambient light for more shading detail when not lit; we'll now lose out on many of the finer AO material details.

Certainly not that big a deal, but I guess everyone's typical workflow is to only stick with the basic high to low poly AO bake?

Billy Lundevall

If you ask me, AO should not be added as a texture at all and all shadows should be happening by light being blocked by nearby geometry only. The height maps are still included, so having the extra definition in the shape can be added by displacement or tessellation. I also never work high to low poly, I personally only do high-poly stuff and therefore don't have that much input in that specific area.

I guess they could still be useful in some cases when it comes to lower resolution game art, I'll ask Teddy if we can make them available as a separate download.

Regards, Billy.

Foursaken_Media

Billy Lundevall said:

If you ask me, AO should not be added as a texture at all and all shadows should be happening by light being blocked by nearby geometry only. The height maps are still included, so having the extra definition in the shape can be added by displacement or tessellation. I also never work high to low poly, I personally only do high-poly stuff and therefore don't have that much input in that specific area.

I guess they could still be useful in some cases when it comes to lower resolution game art, I'll ask Teddy if we can make them available as a separate download.

Regards, Billy.

Cool, yeah probably would've helped to mention that this is specifically for low poly game modeling, without access to real-time AO (hence the separate "fake" AO map pass) Thanks for being so receptive though - been a user since the original DDO!

Belome

Billy Lundevall said:

If you ask me, AO should not be added as a texture at all and all shadows should be happening by light being blocked by nearby geometry only. The height maps are still included, so having the extra definition in the shape can be added by displacement or tessellation. I also never work high to low poly, I personally only do high-poly stuff and therefore don't have that much input in that specific area.

I guess they could still be useful in some cases when it comes to lower resolution game art, I'll ask Teddy if we can make them available as a separate download.

Regards, Billy.

Hi BIlly,

Is it still possible to get AO textures for assets? I signed up for the Indie subscription so that I could use assets for my mobile AR game that cannot afford SSAO/entire lightmapped AO due to performance/memory constraints. I became a huge fan of Quixel Megascans after trying the assets shown in Unity's Book of the Dead demo. Most of the assets there include an AO map (or atleast, AO in the one of the channels of the HDRP Masks texture, which I then extracted). I think recently a number of game devs got introduced to Megascans via the Book of the Dead assets, and us mobile devs are really hurting for baked AO maps. Aftering signing up for the Indie subscription, I was sad to see that it seems only the Surfaces contain AO textures. I plan to pretty much exclusively use Megascans for the environments of all my mobile AR games henceforth, so having a baked AO texture is pretty crucial. It seems like most PBR assets that I buy for game development contain a baked AO texture.

Basically, this longwinded post is a plea to allow AO textures for download. Please, us mobile devs really need them! Thanks for your time!