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Best way to apply an ambient occlusion texture

by Greg G · in Artist Corner · 04/12/2010 (3:16 pm) · 2 replies

I'm a little confused as to what tonemap and lightmap do. I have a black and white AO texture I baked in my 3D app and I want to apply it to a model in Torque3D.

I thought to use lightmap first, but it appeared to boost the brightness of my model in addition to darkening it. It also appeared to be affected by how much light was hitting the surface. However, I can only get the overlay slot to work with an RGBA image and that seams like a big waste when I only want to apply AO and get some areas darker.

So what is the best way to apply a single channel black and white ambient occlusion texture to a model?

Thanks
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Torque 3D Owner Daniel Balmert
Default Studio Name
#1
04/15/2010 (1:50 pm)
http://www.torquepowered.com/community/forums/viewthread/106963

and if you don't have access to it [credits to Steve Yorkshire]:

Light Map - contains baked shadows and lighting, greyscale, uses 2nd UV channel

Tone Map - coloured lightmap, uses 2nd UV channel

Detail Map - a simple greyscale overlay, areas >128 appears lighter, <128 is darker

Detail Normal Map - a normal map for the detail map, currently causing issues in Basic Lighting and so not being used in stock 1.1alpha

Overlay Map - uses 2nd UVchannel and alpha channel to determine which parts of this texture are visible over the top of the diffuse map

Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
#2
04/15/2010 (1:54 pm)
Thanks Daniel *basks in warm glow* lol

You can of course bake AO into you diffuse with a 2D app

Or use an overlay map.