Ambient occlusion

Intro Class (specifically Kirk),

Here is the recipe for doing an ambient occlusion render:

Assign a SurfaceShader material to your objects.

In the Out Color slot of the material click on the checkerboard box (create render node) and then choose the Mental Ray tab, Textures turndown and the mib_amb_occ texture.

Switch the renderer to mental ray from the Render Settings tab.

Hit render.

To adjust the quality, increase the samples to something like 64 - 128 in the mib_amb_occ node.