AO maps question.

Snader

Here's a simple question, which possibly has some complicated answers:

Is there any reason to have an AO map?
I.e. not to just multiply it over the diffuse in photoshop, but load it in to ???-engine as a separate file.

Bruno Afonseca

In the project I'm working at right now, we do that, because we use tiling textures for some objects, and reuse textures around too. But if you have a unique texture for a unique object and you don't use a lot of overlapping, I don't see why you should bother having a separate file.

cman2k

One reason is that it you can use shaders to make it dynamic (eg; if the object is brightly lit, the AO goes away as it really should).