Ambient occlusion setup

[matthewwr]

Hello again!

I'm wanting to re-create an ambient occlusion setup, purely node based in amplify. I'm not worried about render times, as I'm rendering to frames anyway for a short movie. I'm basically wondering if there would be a way to setup a custom ambient occlusion node graph that would take into account surrounding geometry to generate black and white mattes that I could use for let's say, darkening my spec on hair the thicker it gets, so darkening hair the closer it is to the scalp. I would also use this to bend my normals on the junction between the eyelids of my character and it's cornea geo to create a tear line. I know the traditional method would involve creating a mesh that represents the tear line, but in film I use this occlusion trick quite a bit to get the desired results without having to model or rig some more complex models.

I'm open to suggestions, but is there any way I can re-create this in amplify? I'm not comfortable with scripting, but have a really good grasp on node based math, so any suggestions or tips would be welcome.

I have screen space ambient occlusion working fine, but I can't use this info for more complex shading tricks like I'm trying to achieve.

Thanks for the help or suggestions!

Cheers

Matt

[Amplify_Borba]

Hey there!

This is quite a complex endeavor, while it's possible to create custom post-processing shaders in ASE, by your description of the intended features and tricks you would like to implement, it would definitely require additional scripting and shader coding, as it's not possible to achieve such by just using shaders developed through a node editor.

Apologies for not being able to provide further assistance regarding this subject, I would suggest looking into alternate AO solutions that are flexible enough to meet your requirements.

[matthewwr]

No problemo!

That's what I assumed, just wanted to ask the experts

Thanks for the response

Matt