Tutorial: Ambient Occlusion in Maya - by Alchemist101

[NajumAnwar]

after reading the full thread, the process I would have put up here was already put up. so be sure to read the whole thread :-D

[jidus]

Wow. At the risk of sounding like a huge idiot, I've been painting my AO in photoshop! I learned AO in 3DSMax, but never learned to do it properly in Maya. Since I assumed there would be a learning curve invloved, I just spent my time painting instead of learning (bad choice, kids).

Thank you!

[Fishypants]

Cool tutorial, but why do you suggest to set the environment to white? The ambient occlusion node calculates its color independent of the environment color, unless you're using final gather occlusion . . . Seems like an unnecessary step is all.

[benclark]

setting the environment colour was just for the actual render not the bake

I tried to write the tutorial to show how to visualise the final result in a render before baking it out. Its a lot quicker to adjust the values and spread with mental ray renders than it is to rebake every time

[jidus]

Fishypants, in my opinion, it is easier to see the shadows created by the AO if your viewport background is white. It is not "necessary", but it may be helpful.

[Fishypants]

Originally Posted by jidus

Fishypants, in my opinion, it is easier to see the shadows created by the AO if your viewport background is white. It is not "necessary", but it may be helpful.

Well, to each their own I suppose

[Haiasi]

If all we're doing is baking to a texture, can we skip all the way to Step 6? Seems setting up the information in the previous steps does not apply for baking.

The tutorial seems to be a little out of date. There is now an option to set up cages while baking and I'm not sure if I should not set up a cage or follow your example here.

Here is a screenshot of the new options in Maya 2009:

[benclark]

the option to setup a cage isn't new. Its been there for ages, you need to load a mesh in for it to show up but yeah you should setup a cage for baking

the tutorial is a little dated now, its more than 2 years old. I don't use Maya anymore so that's why it hasn't been updated or changed

[Haiasi]

Alrighty. Thanks for clearing that up Ben

[Dennispls]

I would like to point out that when you are in the batch bake settings, Ben shows Light and Color in his Color mode settings box.
Set this option to Occlusion otherwise your bake will come out solid white.