AO From Height Node - Derive

Derive Node Reference

AO From Height Node

Description

This node has the ability to extract an ambient occlusion map from a given heightmap. This is done on the basis of a sobel operation. Derive will interpret any input as a grayscale heightmap, regardless of whether it actually is one or not.

Sample Tree

Properties

Property Name	Property Type	Description
Strength	Float	Set the strength of the ambient occlusion values. The higher the value, the stronger the occlusion effect.
Bias	Float Slider	The bias determines how much steepness should be included into the operation. High values mean, that even near-horizontal parts of the height field are included, while lower values limit the operation to steep areas of the height field.
Smoothness	Float Slider	Smoothens out the final result to avoid artifacts and make the ambient occlusion look more natural.

Inputs

Input Name	Allowed Data Types	Description
Heightmap	Float, RGBA (automatically converted to grayscale, becoming float data)	Input that takes the heightmap for the AO extraction.

Outputs

Output Name	Data Type	Description
AO	Float	Outputs an ambient occlusion map extracted from the inputted heightmap, based on the given properties.