Compositing Ambient Occlusion, AO from Maya, Max, XSI, etc.

This post by Zap on mental ray is just to good to forget so I have posted his theory image here for how to CORRECTLY composite your render layers. If you don't understand it please check out his blog post for the detailed explanation.

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2008/11/joy-of-little-ambience.html

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How to convert Autodesk Max V-ray To Maya V-ray materials?

NOTE: Several people have commented that this doesn't work for them anymore. I don't have access to Max any longer so I can't test it unfortunately. If it does work for you please comment below so that others can find out what worked for you.

If you find yourself cursing Mental Ray's integration to Maya then you OWE it to yourself to try V-ray for Maya. It's a whole different ball game of ease and happiness instead of horror and retribution! However you will notice that there are TONS of V-ray materials available for Max but not so many for Maya. Terribly unfair by my estimation, here is the solution!

Export After Effects CS3 camera paths to Maya, Max, Lightwave

Run this little script in After effects CS3 to export your AE camera path to Autodesk Maya, Lightwave or Max. I have only used it in Maya so far, but it works fantastic! Unfortunately though, I could NOT get the script to run in After Effects CS5, it crashes.

This script was graciously created by Ryan Gilmore (www.urbanspaceman.net)

In AE just go to file>scripts>run script file.

Here's the link.

AE3DExport Download link