Ok so I am sure everyone knows several ways to accomplish this task. Even in Maya you can bake out an Ambient Occlusion pass. My goal with this tutorial was to figure out a way to accomplish a similar effect using Photoshop. In this example I'll show you how I was able to accomplish this task. So lets get started.1. Desaturate Diffuse
After I have the diffuse texture complete. I flatten the image.
Then I desaturated the image like in the image to the right. Desaturate can be found under Image-Adjustments-Desaturate.
2. Highpass Filter at 2 pixels
Next I run the image from the step above through a Highpass
filter. The filter can be found under Filter-Other-Highpass.
The purpose here was to define edges and areas that could
appear a bit darker. I ran mine at 2 pixels but it isn't an exact
science. Feel Free to experiment with your settings. The results
can be seen in image #2.
3. Adjust threshold
Almost there! With this step we are still refining the outline/defining the dark areas that should appear shaded. So we make a threshold adjustment in this step. The Threshold adjustment can be found under Image - Adjustments - Threshold. The result can be seen in image #3.
4. Multiple the layer over the diffuse at a 35% opacity
In this last step we are just creating a layer on top of the diffuse and then using our third image with a photoshop blend mode. I set the blend mode to multiply and lowered the opacity to 35% to help fade out the effect and make it blend better. The result can be seen in image #4.
