How can i use textures for opacity with the ambient occlusion shader in MtoA 2.0.1 for Maya 2017?

[Stephen.Blair · Accepted solution]

As of Arnold 5, the opacity, ambient occlusion, and flat shaders are color shaders. They don't support opacity. You'll have to combine one of those shaders with a shader that does handle opacity (for example, use the color from ambient occlusion with the opacity from standard surface).

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much@Stephen Blair

[Mr.baiking]

I connect ambient occlusion to standard surface with opactiy, the beauty pass is fine , but i want to write this to the AOVs, it return black

[Anonymous]

Oh god..thanks a lot for this. I almost went crazy searching for the opacity option, and i coulndt find it since it was removed.

[Guilherme_Trevisan]

I once needed an AO + Opacity for the leaves of a tree. To make it work I created an AiStandardSurface and plugged an AiAmbientOcclusion(OutColor) to its Emission Color (Emission Weight = 1), and removed any Base color and Specular.

After that I plugged the alpha of my leaf image to opacity R,G and B.

Then in visibility for the object I turned off everything except Primary Visibility,Cast Shadows, and Self Shadows. This worked for me.

[parabhdeep]

For Alpha Ambient Occlusion

• Go to render setting -> AOVS Tab->Add Custom
• Add custom AOV and name it Occlusion
• Select AOV and go to custom AOV Shader-> Add aiUtility shader to it
• select aiUtility and shade mode to ambocc