SSAO doesn't play well with smooth shading

[Zylann]

Tested on Godot 3.0 af282b5
Windows 10 64 bits nVidia GeForce 940M

I generated a smooth mesh out of voxels, it looks smooth, but SSAO makes its edges appears anyway:

I understand it's based on depth, in which case it will indeed make "edges" stand out. But what's the point of having a smooth mesh then? Is there any way of using the normals to improve this?

Also, borders of the screen got affected by SSAO too, it doesn't looks right.

Could be related to #8120

[reduz]

This is a known limitation of SSAO, unfortunately there is not much it can be done. You can even see this happen in blockbuster titles like Zelda BOTW. Best you can do is create geometry that is not affected by this, make the SSAO radius bigger or not use SSAO.

[Zylann]

I had a look at Unity terrains which are a soup of triangles like the one I shown, but somehow I don't see such artefacts.

[reduz]

It is most likely related to the SSAO radius, did you try changing it?

…

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 3:13 PM, Marc ***@***.***> wrote: I had a look at Unity terrains which are a soup of triangles like the one I shown, but somehow I don't see such artefacts. — You are receiving this because you modified the open/close state. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#8237 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AF-Z26S32rhhSN7bz8icSrXUiR-Im9haks5sDtFCgaJpZM4MxB2u> .

[Zylann]

Hmm after more testing with a very similar mesh, Unity does have the same issue, though it looks slightly different (this is an Obscurance image effect with a radius of 0.3, in case it matters):

Enabled:

Disabled:

I would even say it looks better even though there are visible edges, not sure how to explain why^^"
Maybe that's the gradients...

[reduz]

looks like the same thing you have on Godot with less intensity..