====== Ambient Occlusion Maps ======
The Ambient Occlusion maps within Knald are generated one the fly from the Normal & Height Maps provided by The Integrator. They are adjustable in real time and produce extremely high quality and clean results that rival baked AO at 600+ rays.

[{{https://s3.amazonaws.com/docs.knaldtech.com/docuwiki/ao_knald.png?nolink|Ambient Occlusion Settings}}]
 

===== The Ambient Occlusion Group's Settings =====

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**AO Scale:** The strength of the image based AO, irrespective of the Global Intensity slider.

**Mesh AO:** This check box is a toggle to enable and disable Low Poly Ambient Occlusion via an imported mesh.

**Opacity:** The level of opacity used when mixing the Low Poly Ambient Occlusion with the image based Ambient Occlusion.

**Rays:** This slider is used to determine the number of samples in a discrete evaluation of the integral across the half sphere for diffuse outgoing radiance with a constant radiance field with a minimum of 256 and maximum of 8192 rays being available.
  * A higher number or rays will increase the quality of the Mesh Ambient Occlusion at the cost of speed.
  * We do not recommend going below a value of 512 rays as this can cause banding to appear in the map.
  * A value of 1024-2048 or above should be perfect for production.

**Bias:** A bias value based upon mesh density. A value of 10 should be good in most situations.
[{{https://s3.amazonaws.com/docs.knaldtech.com/docuwiki/rubble_tile_occlusion.jpg?nolink&512|Ambient Occlusion}}]