Problems setting up AO map

Development Rendering
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1

Hi

I’m not sure if anyone will respond to this, but I really need some help with setting up my baked Ambient Occlusion map from Substance Painter. From what little I’ve found out online, baked AO maps don’t work with a Dynamic Lighting setup, right…? It needs to be set to Static…? Whenever I connect the texture map up in the material, the mesh never shows any difference between it on and off. I’ve even tried setting up a Parameter to increase the AO, but it doesn’t make any difference. I’ve checked the red channel and the map is definitely there.

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Am I right in saying that it’s pointless even bothering with an AO bake then if using Dynamic Lighting…? The other problem is, if I set the lights to Static, the mesh goes completely black.

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I’m not sure how to go about rectifying this. Can anyone help? Thanks.

2

Hi, if you set “Force No Precomputed Lightning” to true in your world settings, then you get AO with dynamic lightning (but then ofc you cannot use static lightning anymore…).

Otherwise you need to bake lightning, then the AO will get baked into the lightmaps.

3

Thanks for the suggestion. I don’t mind if I don’t use Static Lighting. Personally, I prefer Dynamic, but I’ll give that a try and report back. :slight_smile:

4

Okay, I’ve done that. By setting that to true though, is that just enabling or helping the engine’s AO for Dynamic Lighting…? I can’t say I’m seeing any difference on the mesh still with my baked AO map.