Lumen Static Lighting AO 5.4

Development Rendering
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1

I wanted to use the AO input in the material shader node but when I plugged something into it, nothing shows up.

I googled that I had to untick the “allow static lighting” in editor preferences, for AO to work with Lumen.

However, once I did that and restarted the editor. The scene looks completely different. I don’t see any light bouncing anymore. The models are only lit up exactly where the spotlight hits, no lightbounces onto the walls etc so the entire scene looks way darker and contrasting then before.

Am I doing it wrong? All I want is Lumen, light bounces and shaders to have the AO input usable for custom AO on models via textures.

I’m on UE 5.4

2

The AO pin has never worked.

You can get a very good approximation, using this sort of setup ( here, the green channel has AO )

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The param needs to be somewhere between 1 ( no AO ), and 2 or more.

AO2

Better example

AO3

No need to bother with static light :slight_smile:

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3

Thank you so much! This is a great help and I will probably stick to this method :slight_smile:

I was initially watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65cgc3jbNlg&list=WL&index=2

It seemed to work for him? With his method the AO won’t show up in direct light but I couldn’t manage to replicate it. Ticking off the allow static light kind of broke the lumen look or at least the light bounces.

I’m curious if you know what he did or if I maybe misinterpreted what he did.

In any case, your solution seems like it will do the job for me pretty well so i’m very appreciative of that :smiley:

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4

Yes, and you can choose how strong it is :star_struck:

5

I just tried turning the option off in a project, and everything looks a bit blown out ( like the skylight in a little high ), and the AO still doesn’t work :star_struck:

6

yeah same, it removed all the light bouncing and the AO still didn’t work. Bummer, but your solution is a good workaround I think :slight_smile:

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