Hi guys,
Ambient occlusion is something I don't have much experience with. In the past when I bake AO I usually do it to low poly objects.
I want to know if it's best to bake AO after the high poly version of the said object has been modeled or if it makes more sense to bake it in low poly?
Thanks in advance!
Replies
usually you have the lowpoly ready and bake the ao from the highpoly down to the lowpolies, like you would do with a normalmap.
- If you have only the low poly and you use a software like substance painter you can generate all your maps including AO just with the low poly ( you use the low poly as the high poly ).
- If you have an high poly mesh, you usually bake all the maps from the high poly to the low poly, including AO
- If you have an high poly mesh that you use only for materials ID, i don't know about what other people do in this case but i usually bake the ID maps from the high poly and then i bake the remaining maps from the low poly only.
I'm not sure what you mean by ID maps, could you please elaborate on that?
You get an answer faster, and you'll not just one persons answer but like, a million. Also, then you can act like a know-it-all. "Me? Not know what a such and such is? No, of course I do!" I've been doing this for years. Nobody has any idea how big a dumbass I really am. Thanks google.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Ambient_occlusion_map#EarthQuake.27s_Baking_Method
All of this is should be covered here: https://marmoset.co/posts/toolbag-baking-tutorial/
Generally speaking, calculating AO from the low poly can introduce shading errors, and of course the level of detail that you'll get will be much lower than if generated from a high poly mesh.