Wisdom Ambient Occlusion - evolved SSAO - the best AO

Realistic AO / Temporal Accumulation / Physically Correct / Efficient / Console Ready / HDRP

Wisdom AO is an ambient occlusion solution that uses industry leading Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion algorithm that provides ambient occlusion results similar to path-traced rendering. Wisdom AO works across the platform and it has special optimization for DX11/12 and console platforms. Wisdom AO supports both HDRP and traditional 3D pipeline, providing astonishing ambient occlusion effect.

Features

Industry-leading GTAO algorithm makes it have incredible image quality with a result similar to path-traced rendering result. Extremely accurate ambient occlusion result with high performance.


This ambient occlusion features a double frequency ambient map, which provides both detailed occlusion and wide range occlusion at the same time.


Temporal accumulation option is available in this plugin. This allows ambient occlusion be rendered with lower presets and get the same or even better results compared to non-temporal AO with blur. This gives the effect huge performance boost.


The ambient occlusion has an efficient simulation for multi-bounced colored AO to provide near physically-accurate result that responses to different albedo and reflectivity.


This shaders also supports PBR Injection, which allows you to create realistic occlusion. Color bleed can also be applied into Injection and make the colors much more accurate.


High compatibility: Console ready with HDRP!
This effect works on DirectX 12, DirectX 11, DirectX 9, Vulkan, OpenGL and GLES. Consoles (PS4, XBoxOne, and Switch), and mobile (GLES 3.1) are supported! More than that, single pass stereo and HDRP* is also supported

About compatibility of HDRP:

If you are using HDRP, Wisdom AO works as an Post Processing Stack v2 plugin. You need to install post processing stack v2 to use this. If you can't find the plugin in the effect list (Custom->Wisdom AO), you may need to get to WisdomAO/SRP/WisdomAO_SRP.cs and enables SRP support with the macro in the first line. Since old versions of Unity3d does not support SRP and it won't even compile without post processing stack v2, SRP support can't be enabled by default.

If you use the standard 3D pipeline (or Legacy pipeline), you may encouter an error like this:

The solution is to delete the folder "SRP" under "Wisdom AO" main folder. As files in SRP are only for HDRP support, you can delete them in non SRP pipelines, and this will solve the compilation problem. Since Unity3d does not provide a macro for HDRP enabled environment, this is a compromise I need to make. Sorry for the inconvenience.

*Due to a bug in Asset Store Uploader, I can't upload the package for Unity 5.6.0+ platforms. This version support will come in the next minor patch soon after 1.0.0 gets onto the platform (currently in review). Currently it's 2018.2.17 or higher.

And, more screenshots:

 

After Wisdom AO:

Before Wisdom AO:

After Wisdom AO:
Before Wisdom AO:
After Wisdom AO:


Asset store link, for only $22.99 :
https://assetstore.unity.com/packag...camera-effects/wisdom-ambient-occlusion-78448

Feel free to contact me about this plugin.

 

AO Only, No down sample

AO Only, 2x down sample (3~4x performance). This plugin is friendly to console platforms or 4K platforms where downsamples are needed for performance issues.


AO Only:


AO Only


I know you guys like a comparison, so:
This is a comparison between standard SSAO, HBAO and Wisdom Occlusion:

 

@bobcao3 : interesting implementation !
Did you made some tests against NNAO (Neural Network AO) http://theorangeduck.com/page/neural-network-ambient-occlusion
I wanted to implement NNAO for one of our mobile POC, because of its simplicity vS. quality of rendering.
If your implementation can provide realtime speed on mobile platform, that would be interesting.
Is it modular enough for us to add our own shader code inside it ?

 

@Pode I think the lowest profile can run on mobile. I may need to test it first. But I think the GLES support is ready and usable. I will give you a voucher code. As soon as version 0.4.2 get through pending, you can also test that for me! I sent the voucher code through your forum "conversation"

 

@bobcao3 It does look interesting, does it work in single pass VR mode?

 

@punk Yes. It works in single pass stereo!

 

Single pass stereo:

 

Is there any watermarked/demo version for testing? I'm always looking for that sweet spot between quality/performance.

 

Really like the results in the screen shots. Do you know if this will play nicely with Ceto ocean system?.have been unable to get an AO system that didn't cause artifacts on the water as of yet.

 

I'm trying to get one. However, there are posts about assets' code can be easily stolen from those demos. Since they can always export the source code using .NET dissembler, and the whole asset is several pieces shader and C# code. I'm thinking about how to address that problem.

 

I'm not sure about it. I don't have Ceto ocean system right now. If the ocean system output correct depth and normal to gbuffer, it should work. I will investigate it.

 

I would absolutely love to test this AO in our project running on XboxOne and PS4. I am little hesitant to buy it when I am not sure if it will run ok on those platforms. Please PM me if you would like to test your asset on these platforms. I will gladly buy it if it proves to be indeed better than Amplify.

 

V0.4.2 is released on asset store now.

 

Update: XboxOne platform is supported by the shader, but it requires a update. This update will soon arrive in asset store!

 

GLES 3.0 & 2.0 get supported in 0.4.3.

 

Got a demo package!

Screenshots: (I enabled tonemap so these images seem gray)


Download link for demo:
http://qionouu.cn/WisdomAO_Demo_v0.4.2b.7z

 

Update: Improved performance on blurring and double frequency AO.

For double frequency AO, high sample rate, on my intel HD Graphics 5500, the gpu time comes down to 6ms from 10.5ms. On dedicated graphics, it should be much faster. (0.2ms - 0.5ms on a modern medium class graphics card)

These features, with a demo scene will comes to asset store in version 0.4.3, which will be in the store in several days.

 

Update for 0.4.3b: (should be in asset store soon)
1. User document is added
2. Compatible for all kinds of platforms: GLES 3, GLES 2, Consoles, OpenGL, Direct X
3. Ultra quality option with superior quality.
4. Demo scene included

 

Hi, just saw it in the store and i want to say that this looks much better than any other AO solution in my opinion !
Haven't try it but judging just by the images !
I rally like the effect, really nice shadow distribution !

Great work !

 

Thank you for appreciate this work! You can try the demo, though it is a demo for a lower version, the latest version should be even better than that!

 

Update for 0.4.4 (still in devlopment)

1. Improved sample distribution, now you don't need blur in some scene!
2. Improved blur speed, 40% performance increase on blur
3. Overall optimizations, about 15% performance increase on AO

 

Frame time: the lower the better

 

Hi @bobcao3, does Wisdom AO have a color bleed feature? Or is it something you would consider adding to a future update? Thanks!

 

Yes, color bleeding is planned in the next version release! I'm working on a realistic color bleeding system with PBR deferred injection.

 

Awesome! Another possible feature request for the future: first bounce indirect lighting. Another product on the asset store has this feature (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/57053). For procedurally-generated scenes, it's a really nice touch.

 

Interesting. I wonder which one is faster!

 

The performance difference is kind of subtle, but after all these optimizations, it should be a little faster!

 

Hey bobcao3! Have you tested out SPSR lately? There's some really uncomfortable depth perception issues -- multipass works fine. Seems like most AO plugins out there have been running into this issue.

 

I think mine works fine with single pass. I tested before with deferred rendering with SPSR. Also some Unity3d's plugin or built in effect doesn't work with SPSR and sometimes cause the AO works bad. It could also be post processing stack that breaks the normal buffer, which is some how a requirement of Wisdom AO. (You can override it with generated normal, but with lower quality)

 

I just tested using the demo scene provided, so there were no other effects. However, I did forward rendering instead of deferred -- deferred is not recommended for VR due to the lack of MSAA and general performance.
If you have a VR headset you should compare multipass vs SPSR in forward rendering.

 

Can you give me a screenshot? The effect should work totally fine in SPSR with forward + MSAA
There are some unity's effect shaders are totally not compatible with SPSR in the demo scene

 

Sure, I'll post some examples tomorrow morning.

 

So it's somewhat difficult to tell something is wrong with just a screenshot. You need to put on a headset to really notice the issue -- it feels like you're going cross-eyed in SPSR.

Here's a screenshot using SPSR (disabled the Bloom script too)

 

Here's a screenshot of multipass. Same scene, same settings, just multipass flipped on:

 

So this is not a problem with SPSR support.. It is a problem with the gbuffers, which is totally messed up in this case. Do you have post processing stack on? Since this AO needs a normal buffer working properly, if the normal buffer is not working, the effect does not work. But you can use a generated normal buffer by turning on generated normals

 

No, like I said, I'm using the demo scene you provide with the asset. It's completely stock. No post-processing stack, your bloom script is disabled, there is basically nothing on the camera except Wisdom.

I'll try turning on generated normals

 

Hi,

Do you have an estimate when version 0.44 will be released?

 

About the starting of September, with color bleed and PBR

 

Great asset, it really seems to provide the best quality/performance ratio.

A quick improvement for those wishing to use this in combination with Unity's postprocessing stack:
Replace OnEnable() with OnPreCull() in WisdomAO.cs to make sure depth normals are generated correctly.

 

Thanks a lot for pointing that out! This will be fixed in the next version.

 

I like what you are trying to do but the low frequency effect just seems to be stretched in the horizontal and vertical directions in an unrealistic way.

link fixed - dropbox is a pain

 

I can't load your image here

 

That's a bug for old version which doesn't have randomized rotation. It is now fixed!

 

Performance against HBAO (the best tested to date) are interesting. Bookmarked.

 

Looking good. Any updates on this asset? Thanks.

 

Preparing for color bleed right now

 

Hi everyone. Would this asset work smoothly with Gear VR?

 

It should work, but I don't have a gearVR device to test it. It works on SPSR and multi-pass ones on PC with other VR devices.

 

I am always interested in new AO solutions mainly because they are all so slow.
Right now HBAO seems to be the best performance and accuracy I can find but I still want better performance to be able to run other assets like water etc..

Your effect does seem to be more accurate but the demo seems to run quite slowly and I wonder if the demo shows an optimized settings version.
.
I am using a Radeon HD5000 series card so are you saying I will get 6 ms rendering time?

I have so much stuff going on from volumetric fog, shadows, terrain and so I wonder if it would actually be possible to get this effect to render at 1ms or less perhaps using the scaling settings or is it too much to ask for that 5000 series card?

I also wonder if it can render grass without problems like transparent objects?
Also why is it version 0.5 and not 1?

Sorry for so many questions but unfortunately without a trial version I m going to have to annoy you to get the answers ahaha.