# Shared Settings

## Profile

This is an input field for a custom profile with your own specific set of parameters. Profiles store all HTrace AO settings and can be quickly swapped or replaced. They can be used as your own quality presets and for any other purposes.

Profiles can be created through **Assets → Create → HTrace → AO Profile**.

{% hint style="warning" %}
Profiles are especially useful for the HDRP version, since it doesn’t work as part of Unity’s Volume system. For the URP version, Profiles are available only if the [Volume workflow](/htrace-ao/quick-start-manual.md#urp-setup) is disabled in the Renderer Feature.
{% endhint %}

## Debug Mode

* **None:** debugging is disabled.
* **Depth&#x20;**<mark style="color:$info;">**\[SSAO]:**</mark> shows the state of the depth buffer, which represents the geometry against which AO tracing / calculation is performed. If an object isn't present in this buffer, it will be ignored by the effect and won't cast AO. Objects excluded via **Exclude Casting** are highlighted in red in this buffer.
* **Main Buffers&#x20;**<mark style="color:$info;">**\[RTAO / GTAO]:**</mark> see the [next section](#main-buffers).
* **Ambient Occlusion:** displays the final occlusion output produced by HTrace AO.
* **Temporal Disocclusion&#x20;**<mark style="color:$info;">**\[RTAO / GTAO]:**</mark> displays the state of temporal accumulation in the denoising pipeline. Freshly disoccluded areas, where no temporal history is available, are marked in red. Accumulation progress is shown in grey, and fully accumulated pixels are displayed in white.
* **Shading Rate Visualization&#x20;**<mark style="color:$info;">**\[RTAO]:**</mark> displays the rate at which the effect is rendered if [Resolution](/htrace-ao/settings-and-properties/rtao-settings/rtao-quality.md#resolution) is set to **Adaptive Resolution**.
* **Hardware Ray Tracing Scene&#x20;**<mark style="color:$info;">**\[RTAO]:**</mark> displays the version of your scene that hardware ray tracing sees, and optionally highlights in red any meshes, or parts of them, that differ from the rasterized version seen by the main camera. This option is hidden in HDRP if the [Tracing Mode](https://ipgames.gitbook.io/htrace-ao/settings-and-properties/pages/arNur0glRG2vJnfd6CcO#alpha-cutout-hdrp-unity-2023.2) is set to **Native Ray Tracing**.

{% tabs %}
{% tab title="Main Buffers" %}

<figure><img src="/files/pMld5c35MqfFI9NRG6WR" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Ambient Occlusion" %}

<figure><img src="/files/QZDH3HKhPHCM1S6jDJ0D" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Temporal Disocclusion" %}

<figure><img src="/files/j7eyZ45y5L6lFwcScvlA" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Shading Rate Visualization" %}

<figure><img src="/files/UdpvN0jIYMgYkxeFcuXK" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Hardware Ray Tracing Scene" %}

<figure><img src="/files/P1LR6mNzjgE5GmWCowcy" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
{% endtab %}
{% endtabs %}

## Main Buffers <mark style="color:$info;">\[Debug Mode]</mark>

**Main Buffers:** displays all pipeline buffers used by HTrace AO at different stages.

* **Multi:** shows a grid output of the four most crucial buffers: **Depth**, **Final AO**, **Normals**, **Combined Motion Mask**. All of them can also be inspected in full resolution via their respective debug modes.
* **Depth:** shows the state of the depth buffer, which represents the geometry against which AO tracing / calculation is performed. If an object isn't present in this buffer, it will be ignored by the effect and won't cast AO. Objects excluded via **Exclude Casting** are highlighted in red in this buffer.
* **Normal:** shows the state of the normal buffer, which provides surface orientation data used to define the sampling hemisphere for **GTAO** / **RTAO** calculation. If an object's normals are absent or incorrect in this buffer, it will produce inaccurate occlusion results.
* **Motion Mask:** highlights moving objects. If a moving object isn’t visible in this debug mode at all, it may receive incorrect denoising. This buffer contains valid data only in the Game view.
* **Motion Vectors:** shows the motion vectors of the camera and moving objects (only in the Game view). Objects with missing or incorrect motion vectors may receive incorrect denoising.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://ipgames.gitbook.io/htrace-ao/settings-and-properties/shared-settings.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.