Volumetric Ambient Occlusion (VAO) is our SSAO plugin for Unity 5 and higher.


MAJOR UPDATE - our algorithm now makes use of temporal accumulation to greatly increase both speed and visual quality.


Free Demo Download.


VAO provides additional level of visual quality by simulating soft ambient light shadows. It accentuates local geometric detail and produces shadows by nearby occluding surfaces (in the corners, cracks, holes, rough surfaces etc.). Resulting scenes have more depth and appear more realistic.


VAO captures more detail than classic SSAO solutions and looks more realistic. We have striven to develop ambient occlusion without limitations for the Unity platform. Thanks to the new state of the art algorithm highly optimized for modern GPUs VAO achieves superior performance even for high resolutions.


- Compatible with all Unity rendering paths (Forward, Deferred and Legacy) and anti-aliasing
- Works well on screen borders
- Luminance sensitivity option
- Color Bleeding mode
- Preserves shape of shadows when moving camera
- Compatible with Unity 5.5, 5.6, 2017 and 2018
- Compatible with VR including Single Pass Stereo Rendering
- Works on Linux/Mac/Windows
- Plugin is not tested on mobile devices.

VAO is a variant of SSAO that calculates occlusion from the volume of occluding geometry around given point making it very realistic and close to ray-traced solutions (note that geometry complexity does not affect performance). Occlusion is artifact-free and shape of the occlusion shadows does not change when moving the camera making the effect suitable for dynamic scenes.


Our adaptive sampling and downsampled pre-pass optimizations (recently published in our paper) don't waste processing time on areas with little or no occlusion - using saved processing power to make the effect even more detailed where needed.


We have fine-tuned the algorithm to work equally well for both interior and exterior scenes, so you can enjoy this effect in many types of projects.


You can give occlusion shadows a color tint to match desired atmosphere or make use of color bleeding feature for even more believable result.


VAO provides option to remove occlusion from bright areas using versatile and easily controllable function.


Now also implemented with optimizations for VR devices (including SPSR) - you can take immersion experience of your customers to the new level.


We put great care to development and also to our customer service. We always listen to your needs and many of the features were added as a result of our customers requests.


Enhance your scenes using our ambient occlusion and let us know what you think, your feedback is welcome!


Visit forum thread for discussion.


If you have any questions or need additional support please contact us at projectwilberforce@gmail.com or consult user manual.


Check out our other projects.


We thank authors of following scenes used for screenshots:

Eternal Temple by Mana Station
Alchemist's House Interior by Evgenia
Viking Village by Unity Technologies
Modular City Alley Pack by Finward Studios