Material Ambient Occlusion in Unreal Engine 5

While Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) isn't really a thing anymore in UE5, we still have a way to use AO to help compensate for the shortcomings that Lumen has with its lighting and shadows. And, we can bake Ambient Occlusion maps onto models directly in the engine in seconds.
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Project Setting to Set Up
00:24 - Why is SSAO not working?
00:43 - EasyMapper
01:18 - What is AO and GI?
03:18 - Why you should use Material AO
05:46 - Baking AO maps for your models in Unreal Engine 5
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[@raulgomez8523]

Hallelujah!!!!! Finally, I spent a long time researching why the AO wasn't working for me and I gave up, I couldn't find anything about it, thank you William. By the way, EasyMapper is great, I love it. Congratulations.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you! Hope it helps!

[@dubblesnup4457]

Seriously! Why isn't there more information about this?

[@raulgomez8523]

@@dubblesnup4457 I don't know, but everything I found was for the 4, and others that were for the 5 didn't work.

[@ianwatson5767]

​@@dubblesnup4457 Because UE documentation and tutorials basically don't exist. Try making a VR game in UE, there's virtually nothing out there. It's why everyone just uses Unity for VR.

[@DeltaNovum]

Never been so happy to be subbed to a UE focused channel. Haven't been using Unreal for almost 2 years now, due to health and other things. But I'm getting easymapper now just in case I'll get back in that saddle ^^.

[@UnrealSamurai33]

Ever since UE5 was first released, I've been both amazed and puzzled by the way AO was being utilized. Prior to the switch, I used it so much. I just wanted to express my gratitude for not only sharing the engine tip but also providing a thorough breakdown and explanation of how UE5 Lumen is calculating AO. Your tutorial was excellent, as always!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@chriswatts3697]

Ambient Occlusion is so important and helps so much when it comes to depth.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Not needed with pathtracing though ;)

[@gibgibGG]

So the method you just taught is really a less expensive way to get better shadow detail with Lumen and GI, but still not as good as pathtracing right? @@WilliamFaucher

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@gibgibGG Pathtracing always has the best results but is 200x slower.

[@gibgibGG]

Right, but wouldn't you agree we're stuck with it for cinematics if we want the highest quality?@@WilliamFaucher

[@WilliamFaucher]

@@gibgibGG No? Pathtracing still has a ton of limitations in UE5 and it doesnt work well for all situations. Not to mention the render times can be a hurdle depending on the production turnaround.

[@simonflash_edit]

Thanks so much for sharing! I'm glad that i learned more about this feature. You don't want to miss all of this detail in your Lumen renders.

[@aaronhartshorn3029]

literally have been searching for this EXACT setting for months. thank you.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Hope it helps!

[@OverJumpRally]

The AO in the shadows makes a HUGE difference! Unbelievable! Thank you!!

[@NeonFraction]

Never a bad video on this channel. Thank you so much for sharing this!

[@Klarified01]

BEAUTIFUL video! Nicely presented, cleanly edited, gorgeously recorded. Just awesome.

[@joedoe6737]

I was trying to wrap my head around AO in UE5 like 2 days ago aaaaand there you are, thank you AGAIN

[@WilliamFaucher]

Cheers! :)

[@AndrewMcQueen88]

such a satisfying bit of content, thank you William

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thanks!

[@AmjoodBasha]

Man, I feel your tutorials end so quickly even if they are over 1 hour! I guess its your super style, the way you smartly deliver the idea, and your assets are just SUPER and very affordable! I get so excited when I see a new video of yours! Thank you man!

[@sveneschCOM]

Oh my godness, Thank you WIlliam for doing all those research on the engine - it helped me so much in the past to get a greater quality for my renderings! Awesome! Keep up with that!

[@vyleart4488]

So glad someone finally tackled that one THANK YOU! Been bothering me for a while.

[@terramidia3d]

Straight to the point, thank you.

[@meetmistry9653]

Always comes with proper detailed research tutorial thanks alot Sir.

[@user-hn2wr9cm2d]

You are my savior William!❤❤❤❤ I had this problem just two days ago and now you just pop up and solved immediately. Love you William😊😊😊

[@WesselHuizenga]

this is such an underated technique, thanks for highlighting it! You are still able to use the Screen space ambient occlsuion (SSAO) combined with lumen. but the results arent as great as baking the AO into the material itself- it might however be usefull for complex scenes like archviz. you can enableSSAO by using these console commands: r.Lumen.DiffuseIndirect.SSAO 1 r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ShortRangeAO 0

[@cryzenx.]

exactly and then dont forget to increase the distance of AO to fix black spot of lumen :)

[@MohdZuhair-Personal]

Amazing as always 🔥🔥🙏🏻

[@miquelsalvatejedor3123]

Thank you for your videos William! You are a great communicator!

[@TheCheshko]

Your videos are a great source of information. Thank you so much!

[@fddesign]

WOW!!! Another great tuto!!! Thanks a lot!

[@aakashbanerjee6302]

Thank you so much, I was facing this AO problem for so long.

[@random-nekato]

Thank you so much for this! I just switched to Unreal Engine and I was so frustrated on why I couldn't get those nice shadows I always loved

[@DKConcepts]

Love your tutorials and videos. They are always to the point and very engaging! Thank you so much for all of them. They are helping me be more confident to do my personal project! Also EasyMapper and EasyFog so good so good!

[@bcklmk_irl]

Nailed it once more! Thanks so much for these :)

[@dwiz_9336]

You read my mind William, holy cow literally as I was just about to research on it. I checked your channel and voila--it's like divine intervention haha

[@Flipside3D]

Great tip and explanation as always!

[@lebombe8342]

Damn ! Big thanks for showing us this little hint

[@VRDivision]

I love it when ya boiii william makes a new video!

[@anthonymalagutti3517]

Great tip man ! How on earth did I miss the AO baker inside the engine! Fantastic. Btw, O ve been in the indistry for more than 20 y and you won t believe how many times I’ve seen and keep seeing AO maps simply MULTIPLIED over Base color like you mentioned. Thx Epic for helping creatively and technically

[@smallspacesbrewing468]

Couldn't resist 50% off. Great tool. Can't wait to start playing with this

[@Artof3drendering]

wow this is top! HUGE tip thank you William!👌

[@fhajji]

AO is back? Finally! Also, just bought EasyMapper, and can't wait to give it a try.

[@qaxt8231]

great value as always

[@CartoonChris1]

these are the vids we need. I wondering why my AO wasn't functioning as expected and didn't know the right googlefu to find it. thanks!

[@86Dina]

Thanks a lot! I looked on a ligthed part of mesh and thought it doesn't work, but after your video I turned to shadow side and I saw that it's here and works!)))

[@ArisDoulas]

Good video. Nice and short... Leaves more time for drinking! Ok jokes aside, this info is golden! You're the best William!

[@les73-mq8zh]

Thanks William always on top!

[@RV-bc9yi]

Excellent Tips 👏

[@ThomasDiasBatista]

Dude, we need more videos of yours. They are just great. hehe

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@RWBKelly]

Another great tip. Thanks very much for sharing

[@grodkowski]

I might know how to do everything in EasyMapper... But, the ease of having it all setup is such a time saver from building it myself. I'll buy it.

[@atasafarzadeh7110]

It's truly gratifying to witness UE5 transcend the gaming industry, pioneering new standards of realism for professional CG users in both the film and visual arts sectors, especially in terms of visualization. These groundbreaking features epitomize flawless realism! 🤔🔥

[@thelawgameplaywithcommenta2654]

Beautiful!!!

[@nov3000]

thanks we miss you

[@Elfenshow]

Sir I've been a fan of this exact model on sketchfab for a while (Love the shield too) and had this exact problem. The lighting just always felt flat. Had no idea I could get it looking this good with lumen. Also had no idea you could bake AO in unreal engine either. How are every one of your videos this educational? Been loving EasyMapper too, can't thank you enough.

[@thelightsarebroken]

what a man, thank you.

[@Mr_Dee]

The holy grail has been discovered ;)

[@nintenjo64]

Great video and information..

[@cgimadesimple]

great video!

[@horiz2569]

thank you so much always

[@lennygordon1848]

Amazing Good sir! Thank you so much. We used something similar on Dr Strange 2 and 100% can verify, Buildings go from kinda "game-ish" feeling to matching Arnold level renders.

[@3DComparison]

I know that mesh - Knight Armor model courtesy of The Royal Armoury, good to see it within a video on your Legendary channel!

[@notrealquanluong]

Literally been questioning the availability of AO in Lumen recently and this video comes up. How did you read my mind?

[@aryanbarure1479]

FINALLYYYY,,,, THANK YOU SOO MUCHHHH😭😭😭😭😭

[@MrStimpanzee]

With characters you'll have to be careful with the static texture approach. If that armor was rigged and moving around, stepping into indirect lighting area would mean if the character revealed previously occluded parts of the mesh, it'll still render dark. You could bake extra textures in different poses to account for it. Then blend those textures based on bone positions. Kind of like wrinkle maps on faces.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Agreed. I would probably art direct the AO map a bit and paint out the very obviously shadowy areas, and mostly only keep the higher frequency shadows that will always be there no matter what

[@juanmilanese]

A super small note, but when you enable material AO by disabling "Allow Static Lighting" some Quixel Megascans Master Materials "break" (the ones with "fuzzy" in the name) That's because someone defaulted the scalar AO inside those materials to 0 (instead of 1) So if your Quixel rocks with moss and stuff look "black" go into the master material and change that 0 to 1 and everything gets "fixed"

[@WilliamFaucher]

Honestly I advise against using the Fuzzy Master materials at all cost. They always look... off.

[@juanmilanese]

@@WilliamFaucher ah ok. I Will have in mind then. Thanks for your videos!

[@dominikgomoka8541]

Great tip! I wondered for a long time how this AO setting works in PPV, I didn't see any changes when tweaking it. BTW for AO maps quick baking - there is a tiny free progrtam I use for anyone needing to create maps like AO outside of unreal - its called Materialize, helpful to create quick and dirty maps from images nad it has AO map function too :)

[@Leo.Martins]

You are awesome.

[@ISknne3D]

I can vouch that Easy Mapper is bloody awesome, even at the full price its worth it

[@user-bo8yr6ii2m]

Thank you so much!

[@blendragon28]

Wow this is huge. I always wondered why my AO maps never seemed to do anything in Unreal

[@DamienRamirez]

LITERALLY LAST NIGHT!!! ARGH!!! Trying to figure this out! I knew the setting was there!

[@DamienRamirez]

Since you helped me I'll give you a tip: Take your Albedo & multiply it by 3pointlevels (MF), into the MF take the AO map (masked R if needed) & connect up Black, Middle/Grey & White parts of the Material Function. Black =0, Middle/Grey = 0.5 & White = 1. Now play with those settings. Keep in mind it is multiplied by Albedo so you might get some unwanted "blending" but thats what desaturation/colour tint is for. It'll mainly do the cavlitys that AO didn't do without disabling that setting. You could of course just use 3pointlevels straight with the AO map now it works.

[@mattw546]

I bought Easy Mapper the day it came out and it was the best $15 I’ve ever spent it’s worth it

[@MR3DDev]

Holy cow the more you know.

[@wilismatrix9847]

I bought the material and the clouds asset just to support you even tho I already have my own tripplanar materials 😁😁

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@JosephWraith]

Thank you!!

[@DominikMorse]

Do you know how much I like William's content? I purchased EasyMapper and I don't need it at all.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@mysticfakir2029]

I love how photorealistic real-time renders were sold to us in UE as achieveable yet there’s some major fineprint. Glad to have people showing us how it’s achieveable 🙏

[@thecackleman]

I am consistently getting flashbanged on that train :). Gotta keep watching.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Flashbanged?

[@thecackleman]

@@WilliamFaucher Every time the Ambient Occlusion comes my entire screen is white, hence the flashbang :)

[@thecackleman]

@@WilliamFaucherAlso saw in one of your videos or plugins saying that nanite isnt available for pathtracer but it can be activated using "r.Raytracing.nanite.mode 1" :) thanks for helping me learn UE

[@rifat.ahammed]

Thank you so much

[@rileyb3d]

Can we get a tutorial on your beard trimming workflow? Wonderful silhouette and shaping.

[@Fafmagic]

Once again, another essential video demystifying things in UE that should just be. And for those on the fence about Easy Mapper… the price is criminally low. For me it’s becoming a part of my everyday toolset like UDS and Easy Fog.

[@WilliamFaucher]

You're too kind, thank you!

[@Oztarc]

Maaaan! I have just purchased Easy Mapper 1 day ago.. What a pity to me. Thanks for AO explanation anyway!

[@AndreAntunesofficial]

Hi William. Do you know why my sequence is rendering a static frame on my media plane, while everything else looks normal? This is driving me crazy. The final sequence is me (pre chroma keyed) completely frozen, while the camera movement is fine

[@re5128]

Great feature and tutorial. As the effect is showing only self AO for the object, what are your Lumen settings to to max out the AO/GI produced between objects and the scene itself? Thanks

[@ThomasCoote89]

"Multiplying the AO on top of the base colour like that old school thing we used to do back in 2008" I feel personally attacked. Well, now those maps can be properly, great vid thanks!

[@jeffkirchoff14]

Sir I'm a big fan of your Tutorials! I'm ready to buy any paid course you'd love to create

[@benjaminbernard7709]

Really cool!!! Also I sent you a message on Patreon.. Thanks man!!

[@HectorCenteno]

This is great! Thank you! Also, Easy Mapper is fantastic, I will recommend it to my students. Do we know why disabling Static Lighting enables real-time AO? It would seem unrelated.

[@iPEMiC.]

Some Big Studio tell us that Unreal was not enough realistic and also not suitable for VFX pipeline 🎆 like didn't have shadow pass or AO with or many others pass with Lumens. What do you think? Because you share good content here and we believe that maybe no true! 😎

[@geraldo.goncalves]

Thanks you 🫶

[@AdamJanz3D]

Thanks so much, William, for this great tip! Does disabling Static Lighting in a NON-Lumen project benefit AO in any way, or is this AO benefit only for Lumen projects? Thank you!

[@WilliamFaucher]

Good question! I'm pretty sure it's for lumen. Otherwise if you're not using Lumen, you can use SSAO/DFAO, so it's kind of moot.

[@AdamJanz3D]

@@WilliamFaucher Great! Thanks for clarifying. 😄

[@yogeshj7240]

and here i was why my characters were looking a bit soft and mushy while using lumen ,thanks chief

[@Gester143]

so clutch

[@geroldwaefler9485]

Thank you so much for all your great Tutorials!!!! I also have all the plugins from you who are very good !! Have you a solution for the missing Stereoscopic 3D Camera (Not the VR who is so much distorthed optics) in UE 5 ? I want make Stereoscopic Side by Side Renders for Movies like Avatar vor the Big Screen, NOT for VR Occulus. In every CG Software is a Stereoscopic Rendering Camera available, in Blender, in Cinema 4d, in Redshift, in Octane... ...only in Unreal Engine i can not find this kind of Stereoscopic Rendering Cam.

[@d3cemb3r1]

I bought a mapper at full price and I'm proud of it

[@chamalsameera]

❤❤❤

[@BradfordSmith3D]

Pretty good explanation. The sample count / accuracy overlap between lumen GI and texture occlusion is still a very important and relevant topic. Lumen simply cannot replace the level of occlusion detail that a map would provide. Sadly, Quixel megascans are generally poor quality, particularly in the area of occlusion. Often times surface AO is just incorrect, and isn't easy to re-compute in Substance Designer either, since the height and normal often don't match either. Baking 3D mesh AO from Quixel 3D High Poly assets is a common approach at studios, but generally is backed by a fair bit of custom pipeline.

[@satyakimandal6572]

Very helpful video indeed! I am facing a problem with AO, where the foliage clusters are having too much AO in the shadow. This goes away when they are in light, or if I enable hardware raytracing. Do you happen to know any solution to that? Have you faced this issue?

[@ThomasFeinerMusic]

You're simply the best teacher in the field, so thank you for your work! But maybe I'm missing something here: this tweak does not seem to apply to some Megascans materials. Where would you plug in the baked AO texture if there is no AO slot present in the Megascan material?

[@WilliamFaucher]

Hi! cover this in this in the video. Only surfaces come with an AO map. Youll need to make your own material and bake your own ao map for megascans models

[@ThomasFeinerMusic]

@@WilliamFaucherAh, missed that - thank you for clarifying!

[@Jofoyo]

Have you any experience with using bent normals? It seems to help AO especially with highly specular materials but I rarely see anyone talking about it and haven't had a chance to dig into it myself.

[@WilliamFaucher]

Not really, as it becomes yet another kind of map one needs to author, when I would largely just rather have more geometry instead, which would generate better results anyway. Not saying they arent useful, but usually I take a more brute force approach to this kinda thing

[@meetvyas3469]

Hey William , does unreal have capability to output specular highlight pass? I cannot seem to figure out that one. Great video btw

[@WilliamFaucher]

Hi! Unfortunately I don't think it does. The AOV passes in Unreal are rather barebones and limited

[@RBCreation_15]

Please make a tutorial on niagra system for particle

[@pirogamermohit]

Bro, Please make videos fast....Your video are so good and your explaining style make complicated stuffs look easy

[@WilliamFaucher]

Thank you!

[@billyr9162]

I always wondered why the ambient occlusion slider didn't work. A little bit late but thanks. 😅

[@natemorga]

Bro when are you comming back to canada to visit?

[@user-yy3lr9ji8f]

Yo, sorry for not being on topic, but is there still a way to render extremely high res images in u5.3? MRQ, using In high res render tab there is now "Allocate history per tile" checkbox. With it enabled everything runs out of vram no matter the tiling, without it lumen refuses to render any shadows. Apparently it fixes itself if we switch to dx11, but then there is no nanite. I'm working with rtx 3070ti on a relatively small scene trying to render above 6k. Going panoramic is out of the question for now unfortunatly Btw, you sold me on easy mapper, great job

[@WilliamFaucher]

I mean like with any renderer, you need the vram if you want higher resolution. That's not an unreal limitation, it happens with just about any GPU renderer. When you run out of ram with offline CPU renderers, it crashes. You need memory to render. The high resolution tiling feature should work though, albeit with some limitations.

[@user-yy3lr9ji8f]

@@WilliamFaucher Thanks for the answer. I thought of gpu rendering vram consumption from 2 points of view. You have your literal material textures that you need to load into your vram, and you have a set of ever increasing screen buffers that are huger, the bigger the image is in case of real-time renderers. (yep, very simplistic and i'm not sure how accurate) Tiled rendering alleviated the huge screen buffers and allowed some pretty challenged gpus render simple scenes in 32k resolution. Now it's not really possible on way more powerfull ones. Just test it out if or when you will have time please. Haven't managed to solve this in about 8 months now. 3 year old unreal forum threads stayed unsolved too. Thanks for your content, stay awesome

[@Skyhola]

hi...i have a little request, can you make a video about unreal engine 5 panoramic capture with foliage enviornment. thank you and i love your videos.

[@caracal3892]

I hope this is not a dumb question: Is there a visual upgrade to turning off "allow static lighting" even if there is no AO map used in the material?

[@WilliamFaucher]

No