Ambient Occlusion
A shading method that darkens creases, corners and contact points where ambient light is blocked. Industrial Light & Magic helped bring it into film rendering in the early 2000s, and games later approximated it in real time.
Spot it
- 01Dark soft crevices
- 02Grounded contact shadows
- 03Clay-render grey look
Why it happens
Each surface point measures how much of the surrounding hemisphere is blocked by nearby geometry, and more occlusion means less ambient light reaches it.
Recreate it in Pixio
Image edit prompt“Re-render this image as a matte clay model with ambient occlusion only: uniform pale grey material, no color, soft diffuse skylight, deep smooth darkening in every crease, corner and contact point, subtle grounded shadows under objects and gentle gradients on curved forms. No hard sun shadows. Keep the original subject and composition.”
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