Maya Baking

[Kaioni Lyric]

So i'm working on a scene and have textured my furniture but trying to bake with ambient occlusion and this is what I get.

 

 

I did include a area light as well as the sunlight from outside. before I did the occulsion it looked like this. 

 

Am I doing something wrong?

[Leviathan Flux]

When you are baking in Maya, best to do the light and ambient occlusion separate as lights will not have an impact on it.  It's also going to depend on what you are using to render and your process.  When you are baking AO for an interior scene, by default it will end up looking really dark like that.  If you want it brighter, you can adjust the "Max Distance" to something like "2" because by default, it is 0, which causing is unlimited in how far it will be affected by other planes.  

I like to use mentalRay.  Make a surface shader in your hyerpshade and then attach an mib_amb_occlusion node to it (you could have multiple materials to the same AO node if you are using multiple surfaces.  This node will give you a lot more control.  You can adjust the sample rate, Spread, and Max Distance.  I would suggest keeping Spread below 1 and I usually use 64, sometimes 128 sample rate.  

You can then bake a separate layer if you want some special lighting effects and ideally blend in photoshop for faster fine tuning and more control over it.

[Kaioni Lyric]

Yea, I use Mental ray as well and the mib node as well. Ty for the tips i'll try it!