Create a ground plane to serve as your toaster's backdrop.  This shouldn't be too hard to do; just be sure to make it big enough!


Switch your renderer to mental ray.  I like mental ray's ability to make quick clay renders which I'll also show you how to do in this tutorial.  Please post feats of modeling imagination in clay renders since it helps people evaluate your work!

To switch renderers, hit F10 and follow the tabs and dialogues shown in the image at right.


Create a new material using Ambient occlusion as your diffuse map.  Click the diffuse map slot of a blank material, and choose "Ambient Occlusion (base)” map.




Give the map the settings I've described here, or experiment with your own.  One of the benefits of Ambient Occlusion is that it goes so fast you can afford to play with it!  =)