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Re: cheap ambient occlusion
*sigh* Nothing you do with a normal map will give you an AO map. A normal map records the surface slope, flat recessed areas that would have dark occlusion shadows would be perfectly white on a normal map. Using any combination of R, G, or B channels cannot change this, and it is something to keep in mind. That said, I… -
cheap ambient occlusion
I thought this worked ok. Copy the blue channel of your normal map on to itself in photoshop, go to 'fade' and set to multiply . do this a few times and you get a nice detailed occlusion map. Obviously its not a 'proper' amb occ map but is used for overlaying on to your diffuse texture. -
Re: cheap ambient occlusion
I find most people skip it for time concerns, rendering an AO pass as a 2048 map can take 5-10 minutes. So try this! http://www.rusteddreams.net/faogen.html Just render the AO to the verts or a texture map using Auto generated UVs for the high poly, it bakes in less than a minute to UVs, and less than 10 seconds for vert… -
Re: cheap ambient occlusion
It doesn't take that much more time to render out an AmbOcc map or Skylight lighting map in 3ds Max while you're baking your normals? Why bother faking it when you 5-10 extra minutes of baking will give you a superior ambocc map? -
Re: cheap ambient occlusion
Only problem with this is it will darken any wide bevels you have, which isn't exactly what you want. A faster way is to just copy the blue channel and do an Auto Levels on it, then gaussian blur it by about 0.5 or something. Less effort than doing the fade/multiply thing a few times. I also like the technique of using… -
Re: cheap ambient occlusion
Thanks Poop and Vahl.. and polycount, you made my day. I've been looking for a quick way to get nice AO and this is pretty much what I've been looking for. Thanks again! -
Re: cheap ambient occlusion
i invert any detail from the normal map before i overlay it over my diffuse. in a normal map, when greyscaled, any shading detail is inverted (recessed areas look liek they're popping out). works well i think. -
Re: cheap ambient occlusion
Actually i found this great for the fine details in my face texture, but we are using very small textures anyway. I did actually say its not a subsitute for AO, just a quick method of laying some detail in to my diffuse map Rendering AO in max doesn't always do it for me, there is a lot of detail missing. I tend to use a… -
Re: cheap ambient occlusion
just to reiterate what ghostscape said earlier....why not just bake? there's not really any substitution for the real thing. and it's not THAT much of a pain to do. -
Re: cheap ambient occlusion
I never said it's a substitute for AO, i said it's a good starting point for some shading in your diffuse. What I was aiming more at a trick for Ambient Occlusion was my drop shadow suggestion. I suppose I should have thrown in the drop shadow method before the normal map shading trick. :-P sorry for the confusion. To…
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