How to create ambient occlusion maps in Photoshop?

In some cases, your downloaded textures might be missing AO maps, or maybe you need to create an AO map for the texture you’ve created. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how we can create ambient occlusion maps from albedo maps and what we should pay attention to when creating such textures. If you are not sure whether you need AO textures, you can also take a look at my post titled ‘Is Ambient Occlusion Still Relevant?’ here.

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What should one pay attention to when creating ambient occlusion maps?

  • The darkest areas of your texture should be adjusted to be pure black. In AO maps, black parts represent shadows and areas of occlusion where light has difficulty reaching. These areas can include recessed parts, crevices, and areas where objects block light from hitting the surface.
  • The whitest areas of your texture should become pure white, as white areas in AO maps represent the highlights and exposed surfaces that receive direct light, such as the raised or protruding parts of the object that catch more light and are less affected by shadows.
  • Midtones — Adjusting midtones can be a matter of taste, depending on how much muddy, dirty, etc., appearance you want on your surface, without being extreme. They should be adjusted to create a fine balance between black and white areas, thereby achieving a balance between shadows and highlights. Midtones control the overall contrast and intensity of the AO effect.

Creating an AO map in Photoshop

1. Bring your albedo texture into Photoshop.

2. Apply the ‘Black and White’ filter.

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Adjust the values according to your texture’s requirements. Remember that white areas represent the protruding areas exposed to light. Therefore, in this texture, the stones on the ground should appear very white, with their corners being black since that’s where the creases are. Additionally, you may opt to not make the stones pure white, resulting in black smudge-like areas on them to simulate a dirt mask.

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3. Go to the ‘Levels’ tool.

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Make the white areas brighter and the black areas darker. Try to find a good balance between black and white using the midpoint adjusting arrow.

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Go to the ‘Camera Raw Filter’ to further enhance the texture.

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We can use any option under the ‘Basic’ section to make dark areas darker and bright areas brighter.

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You can also switch to the detail panel to make further adjustments, but I won’t do so in this case.

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If you find that your AO map has become too sharp, you can apply a small amount of Gaussian blur, although it’s not recommended. If you choose to do so, ensure that the blur value is very low.

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Final Thoughts (Optional Read)

If you have access to Substance products such as ‘Designer’, I’d suggest generating the AO map there. Photoshop is not exactly designed to create textures, so it doesn’t always yield the best results, but it gets the job done. Let me know in the comments if there are any confusing parts in the tutorial or if you have further questions.

Note: If you are tired of watching video tutorials and would like to see more text-based tutorials like this one from me, you can support me on Patreon so I can dedicate more time to creating them.