AO not visible when Dynamic Shadows are disabled

I have the problem that AO is not visible once I disable dynamic shadows (setting dynamic shadow distance to 0 or setting number of cascades to 0).

This is how it looks in unlit:

and this is lit:

You see in unlit the AO is visible, but in lit, its invisible. So Unlit looks a lot better.

I guess the reason is that AO is only generated in areas that are not affected by direct lighting, so it only appears if something is shadowed.

But how can I achieve the look of the unlit version in the lit game without having to enabled quite expensive CSM shadows?

AO is generated everywhere but AO only affects indirect lighting. Direct light is much more powerufull than indirect so usually(in real life too) you can see AO only in shadows. You might have to rebalance sun/skylight intensities.

I want the AO to show up even in direct sun light. At the moment I would have to enable cascade shadow maps with at least 2 cascades and a quite good resolution and quite far distance, then all the area between the grass is obviously shadowed from the grass, and then all the AO appears to be visible.

But there has to be some efficient way to get the AO to show up without that “workaround” of enabling very expensive CSM.

Solution:

232fe55959.jpg

Yes, it’s physically inaccurate to show AO where direct light is incoming. But it looks great :cool: