Ambient Occlusion Baking is being a pain in my butt

aghostdream

Hi, everyone. I've been trying to bake some AO in Maya and it's just not working for me. I've got a room and within the room is an object that I'm trying to bake AO onto. What's happening is that the resulting map is completely black apart from the small bits that are actually going through the walls into the outside of the room. It's almost reversed..

I've tried putting a light in and everything. Any tips?

Stromberg90

Could it be that your room is blocking the ambient light?
I would think this is the case, and introducing lights should have no effect on the ao, I would suggest you read about it on the wiki, so you know what it works like.

Hope this helps you

Frankie

Ambient Occlusion works by sending out rays in a half sphere to determine how much of the sky it can see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_occlusion

I don't know how to do it in Maya but to get the effect you're after you want to shorten the ray cast distance so the rays think they can see the sky before they hit the polygons that make up your room.

chrisavigni

Check this:http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/1317-tutorial-ambient-occlusion-maya-alchemist101.html

gsokol

Hide the room when you bake. I'm pretty sure that the room is blocking out light.

You don't really want other objects to be part of an AO bake...AO is supposed to be shadow that the object casts on itself, and having other objects nearby can influence that.

Ark

Make sure the environment colour is set to pure white and that the normals are facing the right way. I.e. Inward if your viewing the object inside the room.