Your rendering formula is wrong. It's really: diffuse texture * lighting where lighting is the sum of all lights: diffuse texture * (direct lighting + ambient lighting) and if you have ao: diffuse texture * (direct lighting + (ambient lighting * AO) ) . It's not expensive at all depending on the rendering style, forward…
Just thinking out loud here, haven't really got a chance to test this theory. But what if the color texture already has a pretty dark/near black texture? Then multiplying the AO into the diffuse won't amplify the dark effect that much. In that case you ought to benefit more from multiplying a separate AO map into the…
I think what I'm trying to say is that with ao pre-multiplied into the diffuse texture can you ever achieve a perfect black color if you have a global ambient light that is lighting everything a wee bit?
Thanks for the replies, guys. For now, I think I'll just keep it in the Diffuse map. I haven't really worked much with lighting in UE3 (or Max, for that matter), so for now I'll just incorporate it into my textures and worry about lighting in-engine as and when it presents itself, and once I'm a little more confident.…
@kodde In Unreal adding in a ambient light will brighten everything which as you say kills all the pure blacks. Yes by pre-multiplying an AO map over a diffuse map or whatever in Photoshop will not allow you to use the AO map as a ambient light occlusion map. From my limited material editor knowledge there isn't a way to…
Edit. Now I'm just confused. Are you agreeing with me kaburan? Is my light equation above correct? If it is correct then my Maya viewport differs from this theory. Having a Lambert with a pitch black color and adding ambient color value doesn't change anything in my viewport. Maybe the ambient color isn't the same as a…
Kodde, remember that an 'AO' pass can simulate lighting for sure, but it also very helpful as a base to find where dirt or dust should accumulate on an object. So simply not putting any of it on a texture can be quite a problem, as it will make the object most likely look like shiny factory new plastic.
Pior> Most definitely. But in that case you are using the AO pass as a mask for something else you are trying to achieve, such as dirt in cavities, etc. But yeah, I agree. Using the AO as a mask for dirt/dust/whatever in your diffuse is helpful. The original intention of the ambient occlusion was to occlude ambient. In…
i agree with kodde- use it to mask the ambient lighting in your scene alot and mask the directional a tiny bit, use this in conjunction with two directional ambients (up and down, making down sky colour and weakish and up ground colour and somewhere inbetween the strenghs of you direct and your down) and you will get…