Would it be possible to add a flag to MODELDEF to exclude the model being defined from having ambient occlusion applied to it?
The reason I ask is that I have come across a couple of models where AO doesn't look good - and this is exacerbated if the model animates because the AO can flicker and change as the model moves - but a player might want AO to be on for most of their game.
For example, I have just been working on a model of a radar dish and as it pans left and right, the AO on its surfaces changes in a way that doesn't look good. If I switch off AO for the whole game, the model looks fine. The radar dish doesn't move around the map (pretty obviously), it just sits in place and pans left/right. So it's easy to set up the model to look good with respects to nearby lighting etc but the changing AO during animation doesn't look great.
I imagine that this suggestion would be useful for excluding specific models from AO (and where the model skin would have suitable shadows backed on to it anyway) for cases specifically like a large, mostly static, decoration of some sort - like the radar dish mentioned above.
I don't know if such a thing is even possible, but if it is, it would be nice to have. Thanks.