Tutorial: Ambient Occlusion in Maya - by Alchemist101

[Chewy Gumball]

Basicaly. It give the impression of global illumination. The textures look more real in most cases. I know in 3ds max you can make AO with displacements and normal maps. I would be very very surprised if maya couldn't.

[CopticMike]

Is there anyway, to use your Normal map to create an Ambient occulsion map, because I use Zbrush and my computer is not the bost, so I cant import my hi-res mesh into maya, or else it will become very boggy and takes forever to load, So I was hopeing there is a way, to do this with a normal map, when the Hires mesh is to hi-res.

[k1chi]

hello! sorry for my first post on here being as retarded as this one, but despite finding this tutorial extreeeeeeemely handy I am unable (given my admitadley bumbling, foolish nature) to discover how you load the 'Transfer Maps' window. Could someone help me with this please?

I'm running Maya 7, but every time I do a help search on the documentation for 'Transfer Maps Window' I just get a load of unhelpful, irrelevant jargon. Cheers in advance!

[CopticMike]

OH the version that Alchemist 101 was using was 8.0, I believe, or 8.5, but heres a video tutorial that helped me when I was on version 7:

http://www.williamkladis.com/index2.html

Go to tutorials section, and find the ambient occlusion Video, I believe it was for 7.0, I may be mistaken.
Hope it helps.
don't worry about firsts posts being as you call "Retarded" but almost all firsts posts are, thats why some people sign up in forums to get that help that can really benifit, and sharpen your skills. Anyway, welcome!

[benclark]

Cotpic Mike - sorry man I didnt notice your question when you first posted it. I've actually had about 20 emails since I posted the tutorial asking that same question but to my knowledge there is no way of creating the AO map from the normal map

[CopticMike]

No its completely OK, it wasn't a mandatory question, or else I would have been bugging you with PM's. Just one question, and this one I have been having some trouble, When I followed the tutorial, the render was fine and the Occlusion was working, but when I went to bake the texture of a model I did (UV mapped already), the map was all white and no shadows. I tried this a couple of times and the same results everytime starting all over again and repeating the tutorial to the letter. any thing that could be causing this? Some strange unknown setting?

[benclark]

Its hard to tell really without looking at the scene file but this has happened to me before. I cant remember what it was that caused it but I'm thinking it must be one of your bake settings.

I'll take a look at the scene if you want to send it to me

[DigitalPutty]

Super terrific! I opened my browser to find a tutorial on AO in Maya ... and ... yours was right on top! Didnt even have to search!

Thanks!

[canndis]

Thanx for the tutorial Alchemist101 , I bake the the light map the same way in your tutorial , i never used to render it as you do , that was helpfull.

You had mentions that there are different ways to do this in maya , do u know any other method or any links which can help.

[Rick_D]

yawn maya - anyone want to do a tutorial as good as this but for 3dsmax - or link to an AO tutorial for max that doesn't suck shit?