Bake AO in: diffuse texture vs lightmap texture
polycounter lvl 13
Hello again,
So i've searched the net for what's the best solution for baking ambient occlusion,
i've also found the thread here on polycount on baking maps, but to be honest i'm still a bit confused.
Let's say I have a big level with multiple assets inside.(i have channel 1 diffuse, and channel 2 lightmap)
1.From what I've seen and tried, baking the ao in the diffuse texture gives me more control, i can put it in photoshop as a multiply, so for each asset i have a diffuse texture with prebaked ao ( i can play with opacity, color of the ao-using it more like a dirt map basically). Here my lightmap will contain only light information and shadows.
2.Bake the ao on channel 2 for all assets, bake the lightmap also on this channel
and combine them in photoshop. So in the end I use one lightmap that contains shadows and ao. I honestly don't see much advantage on this solution other than being easier to render the ao for all assets at once.
Anyway i'm interested on how you normally use ao in this case
Thanks for your patience.
So i've searched the net for what's the best solution for baking ambient occlusion,
i've also found the thread here on polycount on baking maps, but to be honest i'm still a bit confused.
Let's say I have a big level with multiple assets inside.(i have channel 1 diffuse, and channel 2 lightmap)
1.From what I've seen and tried, baking the ao in the diffuse texture gives me more control, i can put it in photoshop as a multiply, so for each asset i have a diffuse texture with prebaked ao ( i can play with opacity, color of the ao-using it more like a dirt map basically). Here my lightmap will contain only light information and shadows.
2.Bake the ao on channel 2 for all assets, bake the lightmap also on this channel
and combine them in photoshop. So in the end I use one lightmap that contains shadows and ao. I honestly don't see much advantage on this solution other than being easier to render the ao for all assets at once.
Anyway i'm interested on how you normally use ao in this case
Thanks for your patience.
Replies
Depends on the kind of tech your using as well, of course.
In your case, if you rendered your AO as part of your global lighting solution, the renderer would take this into account and it would look better (if you're just going for traditional lighting). If you put it in the diffuse, or do both, like Bal said, then you get more of a dirt-in-the-corners look.
Like I said, do whatever looks right to you, but that's the choice that you're making.
I guess I'll do both and tweak them until i get the look I want.
(small ao for dirt look in diffuse and big ao for shadow in lightmap).
Cheers.:thumbup: