Show only lightmap from AO

Development Platform & Builds
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1

Hello,

I use AO and don’t want to see something different. In particular I want to see, something like this.

http://www.27digital.com.br/temp/image_001.jpg

Maybe few shadows from a lightsource could also be drawn. It should be done automatic, so no click by click per object. So how can I render only my lightmap, without deleting materials?

2

Hi -

You can apply a Post Process Blendable to your scene which renders only the Ambient Occlusion and achieve something very similar to the picture you are seeing above.

52801-aopostprocess.jpg
52801-aopostprocess.jpg1436×900 194 KB

Important things to note about this method, the Scene Texture Node comes in by default as Scene Texture:Scene Color, you will need to select Ambient Occlusion in the Nodes Details dropdown menu. The Material must be set to a Domain of Post Process which will close all input except Emissive. The AO rendered is a 0 to 1 texture meaning that no AO renders white. In your picture above you are rendering more a middle grey to black. If that is the effect you want you will need to use the AO Node as the Alpha Input between 2 colors a black and the base value you want to render. Finally, if you do not set the Blendable Location to Before Tonemapping in the Material Attributes (highlighted in the picture), the AO will render jump-y.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

3

It was easy to understand. Thank you very much!! :slight_smile:

But I have two problems.

  1. I can not see AO in my Editor and when I press “Play”. Everything is grey. When I Package it all to an .exe, it works perfectly. With another Laptop it works normal. My Laptop has Nvidia and the PC Amd. Do you know maybe the reasons of the problem?

53896-ao.jpg
53896-ao.jpg1615×800 132 KB

  1. My AO is very grey. It’s not from white to black. I could handle it with a contrast, but it would not be so nice. Your pic is more white. So in fact my ambient color is not white. Did you handle it extra?

53897-aoroom.png
53897-aoroom.png1277×716 762 KB

4

Hey -

  1. If you are on a laptop my guess would be that your Engine Scalability Settings are not set to EPIC and that is keeping the engine from rendering the AO as expected.
  2. My picture is a little misleading, the grey that I am seeing in your picture matched my original. I would add a power node to control contrast and a multiply node to control brightness into the Post Process Material and tweak settings until you get the results you are looking for.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

5

This was exactly my problem. Thank you very much! I will try tweaking it :slight_smile: