Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion is a shading and rendering technique used to calculate how exposed each point in a scene is to ambient lighting (source: Wikipedia).

Starting from Eyeshot 2023, it is possible to enable the Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion effect (SSAO): a fast approximation of ambient occlusion computed in real-time.

Settings

SSAO settings are accessed through the property AmbientOcclusionSettings Design.AmbientOcclusion.

AmbientOcclusionSettings.Radius

Determines the maximum occluders search distance, expressed as a multiple of the viewport's height. 

from left to right: increasing SSAO radius values

AmbientOcclusionSettings.Strength

Determines the overall strength of the effect. 

from left to right: increasing SSAO strength values

Quality Levels

Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion is computationally expensive and is best suited for discrete GPUs. To make the effect run at interactive frame rates on less capable hardware configurations while providing the best possible quality for high-end machines, we introduced the concept of quality levels.

Quality levels are specified as an argument for AmbientOcclusionSettings constructor:

 public AmbientOcclusionSettings(aoQuality quality, RenderContextBase renderContext)

There are 3 quality levels:

aoQuality.Low

Provides the lowest quality and the best performance

aoQuality.Standard

Standard quality, best suited for discrete graphics cards

aoQuality.Auto

Let Eyeshot detect the best settings

  Advanced graphics

This feature requires advanced graphics capabilities. Ensure you meet the minimum requirements listed below:

• Shaders must be available and enabled.
• OpenGL render context version should be at least 3.0
• Direct3D render context feature level should be at least 11_0