[GUIDE] How to Get Ambient Occlusion Without Texturing - Vertex Paint

WHAT IS AMBIENT OCCLUSION
In summary, just know that it adds shading and makes shadows pop out more.

EXAMPLES OF AMBIENT OCCLUSION


3-s2.0-B9781558606593500172-f15-16-9781558606593

MY WORK
I am able to give the illusion of shading or shadows despite there not being any textures. Also, I use custom materials, although that does not impact it whatsoever.

EXAMPLES OF WHAT I MEAN

Any mesh that’s material is neon, so lights have shading to them and that includes the mountains in the back as well.




This chair’s woodplanks are one mesh, so I was able to use Vertex Paint to make it look like it was textured.

HOW I DO IT
First off, this does REQUIRE Blender, as I use Vertex Paint for this process. Vertex Paint is about painting the vertices of the mesh. The ACTUAL mesh itself is being painted, so no texture is required.

DIRECTIONS

STEP ONE: HOW TO SELECT VERTEX PAINT

The strength, size, and color is all up to you

STEP TWO: THE BASICS OF VERTEX PAINTING

You’ll often have more control in parts of a mesh that has a higher amount of triangles


STEP THREE: EXPORTING (IMPORTANT)

It is REQUIRED that you do export the mesh as an fbx, so that it appears when you import it into studio.

STEP FOUR: IMPORTING

END RESULT
You’ll have your mesh painted, although there’s no texture on it. You can change it to whatever color and material, yet it will stay. This will not impact your performance either.

32 Likes

BTW you can disable the little beep in gyazo settings. XD

3 Likes

ah yes my favorite “MODEL MODEL MODEL MODEL MODEL MODEL” this is a helpful tutorial!

Amazing tutorial, it’s kept short, simple and straight to the point. In addition you should do a tutorial on those trees, they look amazing…

2 Likes

You are in Goatem Studios? Those are some great maps you made

1 Like

At some point maybe, but I still haven’t figured them out completely in them being performance friendly. They require there being three types of leaves in your tree (light, mid, and dark texture variants), which can rack up in being a lot of parts with a lot of trees in your map. It takes a lot of configuring and testing lol

2 Likes