Hi THX1138, that tutorial is only valid for older versions of Maya (2010 or 2009, can't remember) and down to 7. Parts of the tutorial are wrong as well. Occlusion is NOT supposed to multiply over-top an image.
Thanks ND! I only have Maya 6.5. so unless they have redesigned the layers palette completely for maya 2011 and 2012, most all of the info should still work.
About the Occlusion part, I see where your getting at. Why multiply over occlusion, it just doesn't make any sense.
Maybe the occlusion in the layer preset actually needs a blend mode change to make the occlusion work properly. Otherwise he would have just assigned occlusion to that layer minus any blend modes and rendered out the result.
EDIT: Went over the section of that tutorial again and it seems to confirm my suspicions, it's not real Ambient Occlusion, It only imitates it using a blend mode. I made a scene with a similar object and used real mib Ambient Occlusion and it looked alot different.
Last edited by THX1138; 09-02-2012 at 02:26 AM.