Thanks for the help, I just figured that out by fiddling with things. I'm still not sure how to apply said shader to only certain geometry like my floaters. But are you saying if I turn off the background layer the floaters will still render in the AO bake but won't cast shadows? So what is the issue with Modo's AO baking?…
Another Modo question for you experts. I'm baking some AO using floating geometry and I can't figure out how to keep the floaters from casting shadows in the bake. Is there a "casts shadows" toggle somewhere like in Maya or will I just have to paint them out?
if your set on doing it in modo you bake twice once with floaters once with out and combine the 2 maps in PS, but that seems like a lot of needless work to me. im a failry new modo user but i would have never even considered baking in it, seems to make more sense to just fire up xnormal or max.
No sorry, I got it wrong, that would just totally get rid of the floaters I think to get the shader effecting the material you want, add a new shader and drag it into the material group then drag that material group above the existing shader. Not sure if you can turn off back facing polys from being included in the AO cals…