I’ve gone through like 4 different videos explain ambient occlusion and I still have no clear image of what it actually means to add ambient occlusion to an image.
I watch Sinix and he always mentions ambient occlusion but I have no idea what he means when he says that. Someone please explain to me in words less than 4 syllables.
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Ambient occlusion simulates the way that objects are exposed to *ambient* lighting.
*Ambient* lighting is different than *direct* lighting. Take sunshine as an example: the direct source of light is the sun. Because the rest of the sky isn’t black, there’s additional *ambient* lighting coming from the entire sky.
Or indoors, the direct lighting would be coming from light bulbs, the ambient lighting would be coming from the light that’s bouncing off walls and objects.
Because this ambient light is coming from a large source (walls or the sky) then the shadows it casts are very soft and have no direction. This is as opposed to hard Shadows from a light bulb or the sun that have a distinct edge to them and fall in a specific direction.
Occlusion means being blocked. Before games used ambient occlusion, the game would assume that all areas had a certain amount of ambient lighting. Ambient occlusion takes the blocking of light into account, so that it better emulates real life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_occlusion
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