One thing you can try is to use Batch Bake and bake the AO to vertex color, and then use Paint Vertex Color Tool to export the vertex colors as a texture map. Baking to vertex color is super fast even when you use 256 rays, but you may need to add some geometry to your model. You can set the Paint Vertex Color Tool to…
Fingus> Cool. Didn't know you could export Vertex Colors to a Map in Maya with the Paint Vertex Color Tool. Although the map will be based on the same object which has the vertex colors right? Wouldn't this first require some sort of transfer of the vertex colors from the high -> low? Or decent UV set on the High and then…
Hmm, I didn't think of that. I've only used the technique in a lowpoly workflow. In Transfer Maps you can bake the highpoly diffuse color to a lowpoly, but I'm not sure if it works with vertex color. If it doesn't then a potential workaround is that you just do a quick automatic map on the highpoly and do the whole vertex…
Oh I agree, xNormal is by far preferable for AO. Although in Maya you can have more control if you use a surface shader with mia_occlusion. Still slow as hell compared to xNormal though. I was just mentioning the vertex color method as it can give you pretty good and cheap results, and not a lot of people know of it.
Just thinking out loud here. If the AO transfer map feature indeed is broken, could you not use the Polygon Toolset > Color > Batch Bake (bake override and set to Occlusion) to bake AO on your higpoly. Then map the newly created AO texture on a shaders color channel and use the Diffuse transfer map feature to transfer this…