How to add Ambiance Occlusion to Mesh IN BLENDER?

[Sally Audebarn]

I just want to be able to add the texture to blender and apply the ambiance occlusion to the texture there WITHOUT the help of photoshop. The texture must be exportable when the project is finished. Kindly assist me. Thank you.

[Drongle McMahon]

If you are using the Cycles renderer, and know how to use nodes, it is very easy to combine textures inside Blender. Here is an illustration for a simple case, where two input textures and the output textures use the same UV map. The first image node is the granite texture. The second is the (baked) AO map. They are combined using a Color->MixRGB node, set to Multiply. (This node also provides many other methods of combining textures.) The disconnected image node on the right is the one that receives the baked images. It has to be selecvted, as shown, when the bake is done. In the middle are three images baked out with this setup (parameters below). First the AO map - this is then saved and opened in the second input image node. Then the diffuse color map before connecting the AO map input (or after setting the multiply node factor to 0). Then the diffuse color map after connecting the AO map and setting the multiply factor to 1.00. The last is the output you want.



There are lots of other ways of getting similar output, especially using the Combined bake method. However, I couldn't find one that was exactly the combination shown here. You can also achieve the same effect using two images as inputs for a material in the Blender renderer.

There are many ways this can be extended, using different Mix node methods, adding nodes to modify either map, using different UV maps for different input and output textures. There have been a few threads here describing the use of different UV maps, and the precautions needed to make sure you get the right one in the exported collada file. You might find then by searching for "Cycles".

ETA ... since the magnifier doesn't work in Firefox ...



[Sally Audebarn]

Thank you for the lovely explanation. Is it possible for you to re-post the pictures in a higher resolution? I am having problems reading the text. Also, how do I get the final image exported so it can be uploaded in-world?

[Drongle McMahon]

 



Hope that's ok. Have the output image open in the UV/Image editor window when you do the bake, then do Image->Save_as from its menu after baking. (Same for getting the AO image out after its bake, after which open it in the lower left Image TYexture node.)