Ambient Occlusion can add detailed shading effects to a specific mesh, helping make complex shapes more realistic and easier to understand.
Two ways to manage ambient occlusion
- Adjust ambient occlusion in a material's texture properties for less control and efficiency, but consistency across all meshes that use the same material.
- Adjust ambient occlusion in the mesh's feature stack to control the effect more precisely, to apply it to a mesh independing of the material applied to that mesh, and to improve scene performance by using the effect only where needed.
Ambient Occlusion Feature Properties
| Property | Options |
|---|---|
Name |
Name the feature. Unique names for each feature is not required, but useful in managing a longer feature stack. |
Sampling Radius |
How far the effect reaches from each point on the mesh. Larger values will create softer, more widespread shadowing. Smaller values will produce tighter, more localized shadows. |
Neighbor Threshold |
The minimum number of neighboring vertices that must be smapled to apply the feature. Higher values can reduce noise but may miss some details. |
| Max Darken | The maximum amount of darkening applied to the mesh by this feature. Higher values will result in darker shadows, while lower values will produce softer shadows. |
| Sample Step | The step size to sample the mesh for the feature's calculations. Smaller values produce smoother, more detailed shadows but may slow performance. Larger values give faster performance, but have less visual detail. |
| Include Self Occlusion | When enabled, this effect will consider the mesh itself when calculating shadows. This can create a more realistic appearance but may also slow performance. |
Tips for using the Ambient Occlusion Feature
When editing features before this one in the stack, this feature will be disabled. You won’t see this feature applied until you close any previous feature in the stack you're editing.
Place this feature below other features that transform the mesh's geometry in the feature stack. Shadow calculcations can be more realistic when they are applied after major mesh manipulations, such as geometry join or linear/circular patterns.