Kitbashing and Ambient Occlusion maps

jordank95

wondering how kit bashing a bunch of smaller machine like parts to make different assets would work with ambient occlusion? If you’re throwing all these little parts together to make variations of assets, you wouldn’t get any AO on the overall finished asset. How do you deal with this? Just forego AO maps with kitbashing?

sprunghunt

jordank95 said:

wondering how kit bashing a bunch of smaller machine like parts to make different assets would work with ambient occlusion? If you’re throwing all these little parts together to make variations of assets, you wouldn’t get any AO on the overall finished asset. How do you deal with this? Just forego AO maps with kitbashing?

This is not usually what kitbashing means. You would normally kitbash to make your hipoly asset and then bake that down to a finished asset. 

Making finished assets out of other assets is just being modular. And in that case you would still bake AO for the modular pieces. 

GreyJke

OR you can use SSAO (space screen ambient occlusion), if that option is avaliable in your chosen renderer.

jordank95

sprunghunt said:

This is not usually what kitbashing means. You would normally kitbash to make your hipoly asset and then bake that down to a finished asset. 

Making finished assets out of other assets is just being modular. And in that case you would still bake AO for the modular pieces. 

Ah! That completely clears it up. I was under the impression kitbashing was using already finished parts. 

Thanks

Shrike

the same exists for lowpoly models its just named as a "Set" or modular pieces you put together, and likely merge or batch somehow, either in-game with tools or in 3D app
Realtime AO effects can be a solution, you can also try baking lighting and using UV2 instead of UV1

Alex_J

Kitbashing doesn't always have to be limited to high poly though.

Example with modular character kit:

You got clothing items, hats, different arms, heads, etc. All game ready with baked maps.

You rearrange, mix and match to make different characters. This is your new "hi" to bake from. You duplicate model, rearrange the existing UV's to fit into a new UV layout.

Then bake the maps from the hi to the low.

So basically you just change the UV layout and rebake the finished maps from one to the other. Simple enough but this can save you a lot of time depending on what your overall workflow is.