AO from low poly

Abdullah

Greetings polycounters,

i am working on a small project of my own, and i am not doing highpolys. Just low poly objects with simple maps. However, i am looking to add AO map as well. Is there any way to bake it? i use max and xnormal.

Synaesthesia

xNormal has an AO bake tool built into it that's pretty easy to work with. Max requires using render to texture and Mental Ray, or you could use a skylight raytracer setup.

Here's several methods, courtesy of the Polycount Wiki.

roxursox

Heres a youtube vid that helped me out when I was first learning AO.

http://youtu.be/lTVBEXCJtc0

The guy uses the Light Tracer method in 3DS Max.

JedTheKrampus

If you're feeling fresh enough you can just paint it in in 3D-Coat.