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

  1. 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.
  2. Click the Render Settings button in the Status Line and do the following:
  3. Click the Render button in the Status Line. This renders the current frame in the Render View window.

To render an animation with hair

  1. Before rendering be sure to display the hair system’s Current Position ( Hair > Display > Current Position).
  2. Click the Render Settings button in the Status Line. The Render Settings window appears.
  3. Select a renderer from the Render Using drop-down list.
  4. In the Common tab, do the following:
  5. 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:

For details, see Use hair caches.