Ambient Occlusion Made Simple

I have tried scripts, plugins, and many other things to get a clean ambient occlusion pass, and this is my prefered method. I use Autodesk's 3DSMAX Design, Chaos Group's V-Ray, and Adobe's Photoshop.

In computer graphics, ambient occlusion is used to represent how exposed each point in a scene is to ambient lighting

An ambient occlusion pass is an easy way to add detail to your fine lines, and it also dirties up your rendering, for a more realistic image.

My 3D Model

I do not render the ambient occlusion (ao) pass as an element, or as an extra texture. I add the ao pass as a separate render pass. I do this, because I can turn off GI, which renders a lot faster.

Turn Off

I turn off everything that I do not want to add the ao too. There are several ways to do this, but I only turn things off, as trees and bushes.

Material Override

In V-Ray's material override, I drop a VRay Light Material (VRayLightMtl)

Indirect Illumination (GI)

Here, is how I speed things up; I turn off VRay's global illumination system (GI).

Background

In post production, the whites are transpaernt, so I make sure my background is white.

VRay Camera

You'll need to turn off VRay's camera exposure (VRayPhysicalCamera).

Ambient Occlusion

If you followed the steps, you 'd get a black and white render.

Adobe Photoshop

In Adobe Photoshop, simply cut/paste the ambient occlusion (ao) pass and set the blend mode to Multiply. Play with the Opacity levels, but I usually set it to about 40%.

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