Comment by bhouston
11 years ago
You can criticize SSAO/SAO as much as you want, but it can add spectacular details.
Here is a Viking Shield that I setup shading on:
https://clara.io/view/01529814-3164-449a-8765-61a77cf780e0
Then I added this SAO/SSAO pass:
https://clara.io/view/966d2196-8573-47df-b9c2-bd6e1ad65a73
And the result is this, which I think is dramatically better than what I began with:
https://clara.io/view/d59d26ab-c26e-4fa0-8907-d52c0c8acc1a
I find the end result has significantly more detail and feeling of depth than what I started out with.
SSAO is IMO the wrong tool for a cool effect. If you 3D printed your shield and put it in real lighting conditions you would not see shadows that look anything like what you have in your SSAO pass.
Like the other poster said, what you've simulated instead is the accumulation of dirt. It looks better not because it's more realistically lit, but because it's more realistically dirty.
If you want to achieve dirt accumulation, there have always been many tools that were able to generate "dirt" textures by analyzing geometry, they achieve very much the same results, without the runtime performance hit - and without the negative scenario where the SSAO is "dirtying" up literally every edge and crevice being rendered.
I think SSAO is largely a fad, and not a particularly great one at that, but it's less visually offensive than the current trend of injecting a massive amount of chromatic aberration into every game, like you're playing the game through the bottom of a Coke bottle.
> If you want to achieve dirt accumulation, there have always been many tools that were able to generate "dirt" textures by analyzing geometry
Substance Designer being the big one today:
http://i.imgur.com/jjfjyj7.png
Basically you generate a curvature map where convex corners are light and concave corners are dark, then use that to mask texture effects for edge wear, dirt, etc.
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/download/thu...
>it's less visually offensive than the current trend of injecting a massive amount of chromatic aberration into every game
Are you sure you aren't playing the game in a mode intended for the Oculus Rift?
Ahah, I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed the L/R splitscreen ;)
This is deliberate aesthetic chromatic aberration and it's annoying as hell. Here's an example from Alien Isolation (though in its defense, it might be the only such game that can justify it):
http://www.pcinvasion.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Alien-I...
Here's a bunch more samples, from games that aren't even intended to be retro (well, Medieval is retro in a way I suppose): http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1018237
The worst part about this gross slathering of chromatic aberration everywhere is that it's not even remotely accurate - camera optics were never that bad. Most film/still cameras suffer from CA but the sheer magnitude of it in games is way beyond anything you can get out of even cheapo equipment.
I just don't get why we have to simulate looking through a really shitty 1950s camera (that has been hit with a hammer a few times just to make sure all the glass is nice and loose) when playing games. With the Aliens game at least the shittiness fits with the retro-80s style, what's everyone else's excuse?
I'd say it looks better because it's mimicking accumulation of dirt in the cracks moreso than mimicking the light/shadow.
SSAO a perfectly useful tool for that, but it's definitely more applicable to a shield than to an interior corner of a room.
The "after" version just looks like a bunch of crude drop shadow added at various spots. At close distance the original looks much better with finer texture and more believable details, but the version with the shading might be better for a prop to be seen from very far away / at small size, similar to exaggerated stage make-up on actors that looks gross up close.