Ambient Occlusion appears as only black and white, no grey

Support Compositing and Post Processing
1

AO Pass Trouble
AO Pass Trouble2218×1248 41.7 KB

Hello,

I am sure I am missing something rather simple. I am trying to get a clear AO pass for a few projects, however, this is what I get everytime. White, Black and a whole lot of nothing in between. Am I missing a button to click? Or do I need to do something more in depth?

What am I missing, help me out here yall.

Thank You.

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2

It should just render in the pass

Ao
Ao1920×1080 90.4 KB

It could be your exposure settings (if it is too high it will turn to black and white), you can try turning the exposure down. (1 should be OK)

3

Sounds like you enabled the ao render pass but not the ambient occlusion itself in the render properties tab.

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4

Yea I forgot about Eevee.

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5

Yeah I also thought about cycles first.:grin:

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6

Thank You both, this is cycles. I will check out the exposure settings!

7

Just checked this, maybe I am not understanding correctly. I tried adjusting the Exposure under Film and Color Management. neither brought back the AO grey values. However, Color Management Exposure did drop the overall value and was consistently even as it darkened. Any other suggestions?

8

Are you sure, that this is the AO pass and not the Alpha pass?

AO_Alpha
AO_Alpha1571×757 484 KB

9

Its too less info to say. Is this the compositor or the viewport? It shouldnt look like that in cycles, are you sure you are in render mode not material preview, because it would still be Eevee then.

10

Hello,

Here is my set up

  • Cycles Render

  • Viewport

  • Render layer (Ambient Occlusion Preview)

  • V 3.9

  • Default cube

  • No materials.

Thank you

11

I think you mean V3.6. Used that here for you.
This is a blank scene with default cube, just added a plane. Renderer set to cylces, render preview mode with render pass AO chosen in the viewport.

aocube
aocube1388×826 366 KB

Try if it looks the same for you. If not start looking for updated gpu drivers.

12

I am thinking it is a big and I will have to re install. It works ok on the other computer I use. I haven’t updated my GPU in a while on my main comp. But I would be surprised that they just wouldn’t support AO anymore. Ill check on that this evening.

13

Update : I figured it out, or at least I hope I did. I had to jack up AO distance under Fast GI Approximation to 500m before it would start to show.