You can make your ASS files portable across different platforms by using relative paths and the texture search path. For example, if all textures are specified by relative paths like “textures/noicon.tx”, then you just have to set options.texture_searchpath to specify the location of the textures folder.

For example

kick -set options.texture_searchpath //server/project/ -dp -dw example.ass

Or if the texture search path is set to an environment variable

export ARNOLD_TEXTURE_PATH=//server/project
./kick example.ass

To use relative paths for texture file names in nodes like MayaFile, aiImage, aiPhotometricLight, and aiSkydomeLight, you just need to do the following:

• Put a relative path in the file name box (for example, in Photometry File box of an aiPhotometricLight node, or the Image Name box of an aiImage node)
• Set the Texture Search Path (Render Settings > System > Search Paths)
• Clear the Absolute Texture Paths check box

You can put multiple locations, using either : or ; to separate the paths (Arnold supports both separators on all platforms: OSX, Linux, and Windows)

You can use environment variables by putting the environment variable name in square brackets. For example:

"[ARNOLD_TEXTURE_PATH]:C:/Assets/IES/;C:/maya/projects/Support/sourceimages"

Forward slashes work on all platforms.

MtoA appends the current project’s sourceimages folder to the texture search path.