Ambient Occlusion Rendering - MAYA 2017 and ARNOLD

Ambient occlusion is an approximation of global illumination that emulates the complex interactions between the diffuse inter-reflections of objects. While not physically accurate (for that use full global illumination), this shader is fast and produces a realistic effect. The ambient occlusion shader essentially fires a number of rays in the upper hemispheric defined by the tangent plane of the shading point and returns the ratio of the hits divided by the total rays as a color. When the ratio of the ray hits / total rays = 0, the output is considered fully unoccluded or &(with white color by default). When the ratio of the ray hits / total rays = 1, the output is considered fully occluded or Dark (with black color by default). In between there is a linear interpolation of the two values. Made in Autodesk Maya and Arnold renderer.