Ambient Occlusion Maps

I noticed that when i turned on Ambient occlusion in Marmoset tool-bag, then the details and separate shapes in the model really started to pop out. Unfortunately i cant use the AO in marmoset without feeling like i'm cheating.

As such i had to look into baking out AO maps for the model, something i had never done before. I had done most of my map baking in topogun / zbrush, so there was a lot to learn with maya baking.

The occlusion maps very very successful, but they were not as smooth as i had hoped, so before i placed them on top of my colour maps i painted over them and smoothed out the polygon edges.

Using a Multiply layer i added them over my colour maps. This added a lot of depth to my final model and feel it was definitely worth learning.