In the M_Char Material why was the T_Chair_M Red Channel not plugged into Ambient Occlusion but instead Multiplied into the Color Lerps?
And why does the Alpha Channel in T_Chair_M have the white and black color information when it seems to be unused?
Hi KnightTechDev -
When you place something into the AO material input, it darkens the ambient contribution of lighting, it does not darken direct lighting (same as SSAO).This way it doesn’t appear as dirt when you light up an object with a lightsource. By taking the Red Channel and multiplying the Color LERPs we are applying a dirt mask on the chair. Think of it as a more direct constant AO contribution as opposed to one dependent on Lighting.
As for the unused Alpha Channel, it was added during the development process to workout some effect from the looks of it most likely a sharpen mask if you are LERPing between textures as opposed to two colors.
Hope that helps you out -
Eric Ketchum
Yeah it does help, I was trying to refine my asset creation workflow using single materials where possible and make some video’s and needed to understand why the shelf object material usage and wiring differed as it does from the chair one in the connectivity of the AO input and usage of the texture channels and the unused Alpha Channel which confused me aside from the multiplication of the Color LERPs.
The additional color for back of the seat and general Lerp usage without those differences made sense.
Mainly why the textures red channel wasn’t plugged into the AO input as it was in the shelf example.
Ok, thank you!