Ambient Occlusion in source!?

[Jike]

Does this work?
How does this work?

Just brainstorm anything you might know!

[marks]

you paint the AO onto the diffuse map?! Unless you mean realtime/dynamic in which case it should be all done with code.

[Surfa]

Yeah a little more detail would be nice.

Do you mean ssao because that is possible (well if the depth buffer was a little nicer)?
Or maybe you mean a baked lightmap on a model (still possible but has to be done in a very hacky way)?
Or maybe just the good old fashion whack it in the diffuse texture on a multiply layer?

[TicTac]

If you use an NVIDIA card, you can force SSAO on from the nvidia control panel. Looks nice in TF2, a little strange in most other things though.

[stoopdapoop]

If you use an NVIDIA card, you can force SSAO on from the nvidia control panel. Looks nice in TF2, a little strange in most other things though.

how?

[TicTac]

Find the NVIDIA control panel (Check your start menu)
Click the menu "Manage 3D Settings" (it should be on the left of the screen, in a drop-down menu tree)
Decide if you want to force settings on for everything (not recommended if you get iffy FPS in some games) or just a few games
Start changing settings Ambient Occlusion will be at the top of the list

[Zabiela]

A quick search yields other examples of the Nvidia AO in source games.

I tried it in l4d and personally didnt like it. It uses some cheap calculation and thus looks pretty... cheap. It basically just sticks shadows to nooks in the geometry, but its inconsistent and prone to errors.

[TicTac]

Looks pretty good in TF2, everywhere but the spawn rooms

[nub]

Where the hell is the hl2.exe for TF2? I can't enable it in the control panel without that. D:

[Jike]

you paint the AO onto the diffuse map?! Unless you mean realtime/dynamic in which case it should be all done with code.

What's a diffuse map? What does the Ambien Occlusion do? What does it generally do?

Do you mean ssao because that is possible (well if the depth buffer was a little nicer)?
Or maybe you mean a baked lightmap on a model (still possible but has to be done in a very hacky way)?
Or maybe just the good old fashion whack it in the diffuse texture on a multiply layer?

Whats SSAO? Baking lightmaps on models would be awesome! How does it work? Does it look good?
Whats a depth buffer? What do you mean with multiply layer?

Haha, sorry for such inaccurate questions. I just don't exactly know what AO is, how it looks and how it works. But I heard its supposed to be awesome. And I would be able to bake them myself in Blender...

[nub]

Seriously where the fuck is this magical SSAO option in the 3D settings? I have a GTS 250 which I KNOW supports it but I see absolutely no option regarding SSAO, and yes I'm using the latest drivers.

[kraid]

^^same here, no SSAO option.

[Surfa]

SSAO stand for screen space ambient occlusion which is a shader that takes information from a depth buffer.

You then apply some complex mathematics to gain the ssao buffer.


This is normally multiplied with the colour in the scene and in essence makes the shadows in the scene pop.

A ambient occlusion map is something that is baked from a model inside a 3d package. I won't go into great detail but basically the 3d package normally creates a sphere round the object and then push rays of light into the model and then adds a black pixel on the texture if the light can't reach the area or a white pixel if it can. In essence it adds shadows in on a texture.
Example:


Source doesn't allow for seperate uv channels (like a good engine should now) and so you can't get a lightmap baked in by the engine so you normally would just us a ao map to make the models shadows pop more. (Although I think warby found a work around).

[marks]

SSAO stand for screen space ambient occlusion

SSAO can also stand for Sub-Surface AO aswell, just FYI. It's used a lot in stuff like advanced skin shaders and film foliage.

[TicTac]

I run an 8800GTS, but this should be available in any cards after it, too