Multiple layers of AO?

Hi everybody!

I've been messing around with AO settings back in Oldrim with ENB and was exited to hear that Skyrim SE had it built in. I'ts pretty ugly however but it was sweet that you could use it and also use MXAO via Reshade. Gives the ambient shadows a more immersive look when you can have two different radious of them at the same time. So I was wondering, Is it possible to somehow use two layers of MXAO at the same time? One layer could be used as detailed AO for the characters hair etc and the other could be used to make larger shadows like the old skylighting effect in oldrim ENB. Or maybe something in between. Perhaps something like this has been attempted?

Well, you can duplicate the shader if you using reshade 3.0+. So, you'll have two of them, i dont try this method yet, but in other case i always do this with my bloom shader..

You can do this, but in the past I had issues when I had two shaders with same texture names, although that should not happen.
I can add a second layer to MXAO, if needed. The advantage over just using two shaders at the same time is that only the AO pass has to be drawn twice, not the entire shader. This should save fps a lot.

Sweet! Thanks for such a fast reply! Allrighty then, I duplicated the MXAO shader and renamed it MXAO 2. But then only the MXAO 2 worked ingame. The original MXAO shader just made the screen go compleetly black when activated, no matter what settings I changed. Am I doing it right?

That's what I meant with issues with two shaders.

Haha! Yea, quite an issue that is. So what was that about "a second layer to MXAO"?

Well, if you duplicate MXAO, you do this:

1. shader:
setup textures
compute AO
blur 2 passes
combine

2.shader:
setup textures
compute AO
blur 2 passes
combine

If I instead modify AO to run the AO pass a second time, this runs one:

1.shader
setup textures
compute AO 1
compute AO 2
blur 2 passes
combine

As this saves the additional stuff, it'll run a lot faster.

Marty McFly wrote: Well, if you duplicate MXAO, you do this:

1. shader:
setup textures
compute AO
blur 2 passes
combine

2.shader:
setup textures
compute AO
blur 2 passes
combine

If I instead modify AO to run the AO pass a second time, this runs one:

1.shader
setup textures
compute AO 1
compute AO 2
blur 2 passes
combine

As this saves the additional stuff, it'll run a lot faster.

Do it! I'm using IL now, and AO looks like a shit with the same config of IL, I want a big sample radius for IL and low sample radius for AO.
Btw, you fixed your PC?

No, I haven't. Not enough donations.

You can use Pirate Kitty's SSAO on top of MXAO without problems if that's a solution for you.