[Alan Bolte]

Yeah... except there IS an AO bake.

I'm not a graphics guy, but I tend to associate "AO bake" with a bit of darkness along a concave edge. Why is that not the case here?

[mjn.mixael]

Oh. My. Gawd.

Do you guys get off on AO Bakes? Lookin for some AO Porn? Sheesh.

You need frickin proof that it's there? Apparently so... well..

Here.

It.

Is.


I have half a mind to stop adding AO bakes just to be a dick since you guys seem to think an AO Bake is the only thing that can make a texture job OMFG AWSUM. 

[An4ximandros]

 Don't listen to them mjn.mixael, I only care about the diffuse layer!

[Mongoose]

Oh. My. Gawd.

Do you guys get off on AO Bakes? Lookin for some AO Porn? Sheesh.

Oh baby.  That gets me so hot.  Oh yes. Yes.

[Black Wolf]

Do you guys get off on AO Bakes? Lookin for some AO Porn? Sheesh.

All porn is AO porn.

As for the texture job, it looks good, but I think the dirt or noise or whatever in the shinemap might be a bit too strong. Where the light hits it ont he top half of this image it looks like it's been bitumized or something.

[Alan Bolte]

You need frickin proof that it's there? Apparently so... well..

I am sorry to frustrate you, but you have misunderstood me completely. I only thought about it because someone else questioned it, and I was just hoping someone more experienced than myself could provide an explanation.

I was honestly curious, and still am curious, why it wouldn't look more like this:

EDIT: I'm not even sure it should look like that, it's just that it's what I tend to see in examples of AO. Perhaps it was a flaw in early techniques that I'm not familiar with?

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Aardwolf]

Yeah, there's something... odd... about the way you did that AO.

Is that per-vertex instead of per-texel?

[Alan Bolte]

Hmm, I may have found what I'm looking for: http://nothings.org/gamedev/ssao/
No time to read it now unfortunately, I'm up quite late as it is.

[mjn.mixael]

Yeah, there's something... odd... about the way you did that AO.

Is that per-vertex instead of per-texel?

We have an AO expert here! Aardwolf will now be diong the AO for all my future texture jobs.

Hmm, I may have found what I'm looking for: http://nothings.org/gamedev/ssao/
No time to read it now unfortunately, I'm up quite late as it is.

If I'm reading that article correctly, he would like my AO bake.

[Cyborg17]

I think I would rather have a model with no AO bake than no new model at all.  It having an AO bake is just a bonus for me. 

And I really don't see how this AO bake could be considered inferior or unusual.  It just looks like the recessed place is shadowed, and you know what?  That makes visual sense.

[Alan Bolte]

If I'm reading that article correctly, he would like my AO bake.

Indeed. I've misplaced the link, but I found another article earlier today that indicated that baking the dark corners into diffuse is a common mistake, and they should only be used when you have the option to only have them affect ambient light, and not point sources. Like most lighting hacks it's not supposed to be realistic, it's just better than having no shadows at all in an area with little or no direct light.

[Kolgena]

Ironically, deep space has essentially 0 ambient light. Only the FS2 nebula, atmosphere missions, and heavy firefight set pieces could physically justify an AO bake. At least those are the same scenarios where the diffuse would be bright enough to see the AO at all (unless you don't use dark as hell lighting settings, in which case realism isn't a concern anyways)

I still think it looks better, especially since shadow mapping is still by and large really expensive.

(At risk of being a hypocrite, I think we should probably stop talking about AO theory... this is mjn's Alastor thread after all)