Baking an ambient occlusion map in max

snake85027

Here is my set up.

Mental Ray Rendering. I have a skylight in the scene. I have a ambient occlusion map
on the model. Within my render to texture settings, what type of map do I do for a ambient occlusion map? Because within the ambient material theres the settings for the AO but then if you choose ambient occulsion within Render to Texture it has AO settings there as well and Im sure one overrides the other... So with a AO material on my model, which map do I create within the Render to Texture box?

Also my AO renders are always grainy even though I have samples over 250.

peanut™

In 3dsmax AO is called Lightmaps, if i remember correctly ...

Eric Chadwick

Laurens Corijn has a nice guide on his site
http://www.laurenscorijn.com/articles/ambient-occlusion-baking

And we have more info here
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Ambient_occlusion_map

snake85027

Yea Im checking out Laurens tutorials right now. I am trying to use method 3. Am I suppose to have a skylight in the scene with this method?

aharmlesspie

You shouldn't have any lights for method 3, in fact lights will slow you down. Also, make sure and turn off final gather.