Occlusion Map

The occlusion map is used to provide information about which areas of the model should receive high or low indirect lighting. Indirect lighting comes from ambient lighting and reflections, so steep concave parts of your model like a crack or a fold would not realistically receive much indirect light.

Los mapas de textura de oclusión se calculan normalmente mediante aplicaciones 3D directamente desde el modelo 3D utilizando el modelador o software de terceros.

An occlusion map is a greyscale image, with white indicating areas that should receive full indirect lighting, and black indicating no indirect lighting. Sometimes this is as simple as a greyscale heightmap for simple surfaces.

At other times, generating the correct occlusion texture is slightly more complex. For example, if a character in your scene is wearing a hood, the inside edges of the hood should be set to very low indirect lighting, or none at all. In these situations occlusion maps will often be produced by artists using 3D applications to automatically generate an occlusion map based on the model.