Ambient occlusion is a famous method utilized in PC illustrations to improve the realism in 3D scenes. It creates the delicate shadows that happen when light skips off surfaces and enlightens different objects in the area. So here is the process of ambient occlusion in brief. Mainly it’s a shading technique used to calculate how much ambient lighting a point in a scene should receive. It is all about the managing light that matter what the position or power of light sources. At the point when light hits a surface, some of it is consumed by the surface, while the rest is reflected. On account of ambient lighting, the light is dissipated this way and that, subsequent in a diffuse sparkle around the surface. Be that as it may, on the off chance that there are close by objects in the scene, they will obstruct a portion of the surrounding lighting, bringing about more obscure regions around the edges of the particular object. Ambient occlusion reenacts this impact by computing how much surrounding lighting that ought to be hindered by adjacent articles and obscuring those regions in like manner. Enhancing the realism of 3D scenes is a main benefit of ambient occlusion. By reproducing the delicate shadows objects can have more natural and realism look. In here we are going to discuss about widely used AO techniques.
SSAO – Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
In here depth and normal information of the scene rendered from the camera’s perspective used to measure and a specific method to calculate the level of AO in real-time rendering.
VXAO – Voxel Accelerated Ambient Occlusion
In here 3D cubes called voxels used to track the path of light as it bounces around in the scene. This is powerful mechanism than SSAO and produce more realistic results. VXAO investigates the voxels encompassing every pixel on the screen to decide how much surrounding lighting is being hindered by adjacent items.
HBAO – Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion
Using in modern games and 3D creations. Much better mechanism than above two, it comes in really handy when developing open word games that have advance geometry. In here it uses camera’s viewpoints to figure out which objects in the scene are noticeable, and afterward ascertains the AO in light of the horizon angle between every pixel and the apparent articles.
SSDO – Screen Space Directional Occlusion
Better than SSAO when using for scenarios like multiple directional light sources or complex scenes with many objects.
RTAO – Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion
Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion (RTAO) is another type of generating ambient occlusion effects for 3D graphics. In here ray tracing techniques are using to simulate how light interacts with the environment and space, which maintain the balance between accuracy and realism. Due to power of this mechanism it’s better to have a really powerful graphics card to run in real-time. The quality of the effect will gradually increase with the amount of samples that are used, more samples means more accuracy. Depending on training data, these are the mainly using AO techniques in descending order which consumes GPU resources.
RTAO > VXAO > HBAO > GTAO > HDAO > PBAO > SSAO > SSDO > ABAO
Should I Turn Ambient Occlusion on when Playing Games?
It’s totally depends on the players personal preferences and the performance of the system. If you prioritize visual quality and owns a computer with high GPU, turning on ambient occlusion can enhance the gaming experience, but the perspective of the performance for an older pc, it may be better to turn it off to ensure a smooth and enjoyable walkthrough.
Is Ambient Occlusion GPU or CPU Heavy?
The GPU for the most part conveys a heavier burden than the CPU. Because in AO processing, it includes calculating amount of lighting that needed to limit nearby objects in the scene, this requires a high processing power. GPU’s are well made for that and have unique hardware’s that can handle the complex calculations required for rendering high-quality 3D scenes. Processor’s job (CPU) mainly involves coordinating and managing the rendering process, and the specific measure of CPU and GPU required will rely upon the particular execution and the complexity of the rendering scene.
Which Game Engines can Implement Better Ambient Occlusion Feature?
When it comes to game engines and ambient occlusion, there’s a lot of variety out there. Each and every modern game development engines do support ambient occlusion and variety of implementation will be there depending on the engine and what it’s capable of. Capability of usage of AO, Unreal, CryEngine, Lumberyard and Unity are ahead of others. Considering of different approaches they are using Unreal Engine has a built-in solution called Distance Field Ambient Occlusion (DFAO). Revolutionary game development giant CryEngine uses something called “Voxel Cone Tracing” Unity has several built-in ambient occlusion options. Lumberyard’s implementation is especially nice because quality and performance are configurable.
Does Ambient Occlusion Affects FPS?
Yes, there will be an impact for FPS (frames per second) in video games, specific implementation strategy, complexity of the scene, and hardware capabilities of the computer are crucial factors for deviation of the FPS with AO level. If the FPS level going below 45 after enabling AO, It can be increased by adjusting the settings of the effect, or disabling the effect altogether or upgrading the graphics card or processor to improve performance.
What is the Difference between Ambient Occlusion and Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion?
Approximating lightning based on the surface proximity is idea behind the ambient occlusion. RTAO which stands for Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion is process of applying ray-tracing approaches to generate the soft shadows that occur when light bounces off surfaces and illuminates other objects in the environment. The choice of technique depends on the hardware available.
Also watch this clip to get better understanding,
