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Ambient occlusion

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Brief Description

Ambient occlusion is a crude, but popular, solution to the global illumination problem. It offers a way to easily (and inexpensively) approximate, for each point that is being rendered, how much of the light coming from a background or a sky object is occluded, or obstructed, by other objects in the scene.

The amount of ambient occlusion at a given point in the scene can be determined by tracing a set number of rays from the point in question into the scene, and counting the number of rays that intersect other objects. Using this hit ratio, the amount of light reaching the point can be approximated.

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