I'm trying to render some models but I can't seem to get the lighting right. My 3DS Max skills are severely lacking (I'm a programmer not a modeller) so I'm not sure how to set up the scene to get the best render I can. Specifically the problem is with a lack of ambient occlusion. This is the render I have at the moment...



As you can see, no ambient occlusion. I'm using mental ray renderer, but apart from that I'm not sure what I need to change. I've tried following some tutorials but they all seem to be for models without textures (clay-rendering), how does one get ambient occlusion while also keeping diffuse textures? I'm sure there's a way to 'merge' two materials together but I can't for the life of me figure out how. Thanks!

Are you trying to render it out just as a still-image? If so, I beleive one method (At least when I did it) was to render your ambient occlusion as a separate, textureless pass, and then layer it onto the image in something like Photoshop or Aftereffects for the desired effect. Would that work for you?