AO Lightmapper for Unity – Automatic Ambient Occlusion Generation & Asset Optimization
(I had to repost this topic, as I deleted it by mistake 
)
Hi everyone,
Over the last few months I’ve been developing AO Lightmapper, a standalone GPU-accelerated tool designed to generate Ambient Occlusion maps for 3D assets quickly and automatically.
The project started as a workflow tool for GLB and FBX assets, focusing on automatic UV generation, AO baking, asset optimization, and export pipelines for real-time 3D applications.
Recently I added a new Unity Extension that allows Unity projects to communicate directly with AO Lightmapper, making it possible to generate AO maps and optimize assets without leaving the Unity Editor.
What Problem Does It Solve?
Traditional lightmapping can be extremely powerful, but for many reusable assets it can also require:
- Scene setup
- Lighting setup
- Lightmap management
- Additional bake iterations
- Asset-specific workflows
For assets such as props, modular kits, environment pieces, vegetation, furniture, product models, and reusable prefabs, an Ambient Occlusion texture is often enough to add depth and contact shadows while keeping the workflow simple.
How It Works
The Unity Extension acts as a bridge between Unity and the AO Lightmapper CLI Headless pipeline.
- Add the AO Lightmapper component to one or multiple GameObjects, Meshes, or Prefabs.
- Launch the process directly from Unity.
- AO Lightmapper automatically processes the assets.
- The optimized versions are imported back into the project.
Features
- Automatic Ambient Occlusion generation
- GPU-accelerated baking
- Automatic UV2 generation
- Batch processing support
- Texture optimization
- KTX2 texture conversion
- Draco compression
- Meshopt compression
- Prune/Clean optimization
- Asset optimization during export
Multiple Prefabs and Meshes
The extension supports processing multiple assets simultaneously.
Simply add the component to the desired objects and AO Lightmapper handles the rest automatically.
Material Preservation
The original materials are preserved.
The generated AO texture is automatically assigned to the material, allowing immediate visual improvements without rebuilding materials or manually reconnecting textures.
Flexible Import Options
After processing, you can:
- Replace the original asset.
- Keep the original disabled and insert the optimized version.
- Keep both versions for comparison.
Availability
The Unity Extension is available for AO Lightmapper v1.3.9 and newer.
A ready-to-install UnityPackage is included for easy installation.
Versions 1.3.7 and newer also support automatic updates.
Project:
You can find it in itchio (AO Lightmapper)
I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback from other Unity developers.