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Set up hair self-shadowing
Rendering Hair
Samples and techniques for Hair
Render scenes with hair
Hair
using Paint Effects can be rendered
directly using the Maya Software renderer. If
you convert the Paint Effects to polygons,
then you can render Hair in the mental ray and Maya
Hardware renderers. (See
Convert Paint Effects to polygons in
Paint Effects.) Alternatively you can output just curves to another
renderer, such as RenderMan.
TipYou can render more hairs cheaply using Paint
Effects Multi Streaks. These attributes
are in the Multi Streaks section of the
hairSystemShape.
You can render either a single frame, or render
an animation by performing a batch render. For information, see
the following:
To
render a single frame with hair
- Before
rendering be sure to display the hair system’s Current
Position (
Hair > Display > Current
Position) and go to the frame you want to render.
- Click
the Render Settings button
in the Status Line and do the following:
- Select
a renderer from the Render Using drop-down list.
- If
you’re rendering Paint Effects using the Maya
Software renderer, then turn on the Oversample and Oversample
post filter options in the Paint Effects Rendering
Options section in the Maya Software tab.
This makes the hair even more realistic looking.
- If
you’re rendering using mental ray,
see
Render Settings: mental ray tabs for
information about the options in the mental ray tab.
You can use the Production: Rapid Hair Quality
Preset when rendering hair in mental ray (Render
Settings window, Quality tab).
Alternatively, you can use the Production: Fine Trace Quality
Preset as a starting point if you want to trace fur or
hair in reflections.
- Click
the Render button
in the Status Line. This renders the
current frame in the Render View window.
To
render an animation with hair
- Before
rendering be sure to display the hair system’s Current
Position (
Hair > Display > Current
Position).
- Click
the Render Settings button
in the Status Line. The Render
Settings window appears.
- Select
a renderer from the Render Using drop-down list.
- In
the Common tab, do the following:
- In
the File Name Prefix field, type
the prefix you want to use for the rendered images.
- In
the Frame/Animation Ext field,
select name.ext.#.
- In
the Start Frame and End
Frame fields, type the first and last frames in the sequence
you want to render.
- Optionally, go to the renderer-specific tab and
turn on Motion Blur in the Motion
Blur section.
NoteThe animation will take longer to render
with
Motion Blur turned on.
Motion blurred scenes would benefit from scene
caching to prevent simulation problems during frame sampling. See
Use hair caches.
- If
you’re rendering Paint Effects using the Maya
Software renderer, then turn on the Oversample and Oversample
post filter options in the Paint Effects Rendering
Options section in the Maya Software tab.
This makes the hair even more realistic looking.
- If
you’re rendering using mental ray,
see
Render Settings: mental ray tabs for
information about the options in the mental ray tab. You can use
the Production: Rapid Hair Quality
Preset when rendering hair in mental ray (Render
Settings window, Quality tab).
Alternatively, you can use the Production: Fine Trace Quality
Preset as a starting point if you want to trace fur or
hair in reflections.
- Do
one of the following:
To view your rendered animation, launch Fcheck and
then open the rendered.iff file. For more information on viewing
the animation, see the Rendering guide.
Rendering using distributed render
If you are performing
a distributed render, or if you are splitting up the render for
any reason, you should create a hair cache so:
- you
can do distributed rendering and have the simulation match exactly
- you
can do distributed rendering without Maya Unlimited licenses (Hair simulation
requires Maya Unlimited).
For details, see
Use hair caches.