Electronic Arts Inc.
HIGH-QUALITY OBJECT-SPACE DYNAMIC AMBIENT OCCLUSION

Abstract:

Systems and methods are disclosed for calculating dynamic ambient occlusion (AO) values for character models to yield high-quality approximations of global illumination effects. The approach utilizes a dual component machine-learning model that factorizes dynamic AO computation into a non-linear component, in which visibility is determined by approximating spheres and their casted shadows, and a linear component that leverages a skinning-like algorithm for efficiency. The parameters of both components are trained in a regression against ground-truth AO values. The resulting model accommodates lighting interactions with external objects and can be generalized without requiring carefully constructed training data.