Baking using textures with alphas.

[Joopson]

Hey guys!
So, following this wonderful tutorial: i12.photobucket.com/albums/a214/jenno_bing/hand_painted_grass_tutorial-1.jpg

I've run into some problems. I don't use Max, so I can't follow it directly, but I'm at the point now where I'm ready to render the maps out.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30185090/Grassshot.JPG
In Maya, though, as far as I can tell, there is no accurate way to set up the camera as he does in the tutorial. So immediately I thought "xNormal!".... Well, I got this (occlusion (the others weren't even good enough to post):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30185090/Cactus_occlusion.jpg
So it's just baking using the planes.
I really want to be able to bake with the textures and alphas of the grass I made, though- and in the future, that would save loads of RAM, were I to find a nice way to do it.

Any ideas on how to get the alpha to affect the bake?

Edit: Or, I suppose, a way to set-up the camera similarly in Maya, quickly, would work too. Thanks!

[m4dcow]

Yeh it's a PITA. You would have to setup a camera then assign an AO shader, plug your alpha into that and then also render in mental ray or something that allows raytracing for the AO to actually work properly.

The last time I did this sort of thing I used render layers to handle the other types of maps (diffuse, spec, etc..).

[Joopson]

That's what I was afraid of! So I'm probably better off weathering the storm which is called "max", and following his tutorial more closely.

[DeadlyFreeze]

Why dick around with the alpha planes at all? I mean if your just baking it down to a texture use a bunch of individual grass pieces.

[Joopson]

Because even using alphas, the polycount is a quarter of a million.
And my computer can't easily handle the kind of polycounts I'd get if each blade were modeled out.

[Shadownami92]

If it's a bunch of instances I don't think a quarter of a million should really be that bad should it?

[Pola]

You could go with a modeled out grass mesh and instance that around as proxies which should be fine for just rendering out maps.

[Joopson]

Ah, shoot. I always forget instances exist....
Thanks! I'll try that.