forge-ssao

To add SSAO to an SDL3 GPU pipeline, you enable sampler usage on your depth texture, configure a view-space normal MRT, and implement three fullscreen passes for SSAO, blur, and composite rendering.

Screen-space ambient occlusion is a technique that adds depth cues by shading occluded regions in 3D scenes, enhancing visual clarity and realism through subtle contact shadows in complex geometry.

Yes, computing SSAO requires a depth texture sampler and a view-space normal MRT. These inputs enable the hemisphere-based occlusion kernel to accurately sample and shade occluded regions.

The SSAO blur and composite passes process the raw ambient occlusion data by smoothing noise artifacts and blending the occlusion factor into the final rendered image to produce weighted depth shading.

Yes, SSAO integrates with both deferred and forward rendering pipelines. As long as your pipeline outputs a depth buffer and view-space normals via MRT, the three fullscreen passes can operate on those inputs.

A 64-sample hemisphere kernel provides a balance between visual quality and performance for real-time rendering. Using a fixed kernel size may limit scalability across different hardware capabilities or scene complexities.