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Status Pending
Integration V-Ray for Maya
Categories Rendering
Created by Sean Brown
Created on Dec 12, 2025

Add Ambient Oclusion setting in the GI tab of the Render Settings

When searching online on how to deepen shadows in Vray for Maya with Ambient Occlusion, it is said you need to add a ExtraTex Render Element and in that you then need to add a Vray Dirt Texture and then you need to composite it. A very cumbersome process. But Vray already has the ability to add Ambient Occlusion but the only way as of now is to use a script in the Post Translate Script box under the common tab render settings.

from vray.utils import *
gi = findByType("SettingsGI")[0]
gi.set("ao_on", 1)
gi.set("ao_amount", 0.7)
gi.set("ao_radius", 5.0)
gi.set("ao_subdivs", 9)

I only discovered this after a Chaos member shared the script. I think this would be extremely useful to many if it was built into the GI tab as sliders as it can add further realism and a more cinematic look to renders very easily. Its already built into the 3DS Max's Render Setup under it GI tab and then Advanced. But for some reason its only viewable under CPU but not GPU but the script works in GPU as well. So I'm requesting that same feature in 3DS Max to be added to Maya's Render settings GI tab and available in both CPU and GPU modes.