Rendering scenes with nHair

 
 
 

The final stage in adding nHair to your models is to render the scene. You can render nHair using the Maya Software renderer or the mental ray for Maya renderer.

More about rendering hair in mental ray

To render in mental ray, select mental ray as your renderer. Also, ensure that the Render Fur/Hair attribute is turned on in the Extra Features section of the Features tab in the Render Settings window. Use the mayahair.mi shader to change render settings.

You can also use the Production: Rapid Hair Quality Preset when rendering hair in mental ray (Render Settings window, Quality tab). Alternatively, you can use the new Production: Fine TraceQuality Preset as a starting point if you want to trace fur or hair in reflections.

For more information about rendering in mental ray, see mental ray for Maya renderer and Render Settings: mental ray tab.

Rendering nHair in the Maya software renderer vs. mental ray for Maya

Refer to the following table for the differences between rendering nHair in the Maya software renderer and mental ray for Maya.

Note

The way that lighting and shading is calculated on nHair is slightly different between the native Maya renderer and mental ray and therefore the resulting renders will differ slightly in this respect; in both cases, an illumination model known as Kajiya/Kay is used, but the intensity at a given point is calculated in Hair’s own model for the native renderer, and in mental ray core for the mental ray renderer. This intensity is then used in the Kajiya/Kay illumination model to calculate diffuse/specular components.

nHair item Maya software renderer mental ray for Maya

Shading

Brighter

A bit darker

Support for correct DOF composition

Not accurate

Yes

Support for Motion Blur

3D only

Yes

Hair integrated into scene

As a post process via z-depth composite

Fully integrated

Support for raytraced shadows

No

Yes

Support for depth map shadows

Yes

Yes

Support for texture-mapped lights

No

No

Rendering quality

Hairs that are thin relative to the pixel size appear disproportionately thick.

mental ray renders even thin hair more accurately with high sample count

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