The
final stage in adding hair to your models is to render the scene.
You can render hair 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
new Production: Rapid Hair Quality
Preset when rendering hair in mental ray (Render
Settings window, Quality tab).
Alternatively, you can use the new Production: Fine Trace Quality
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 tabs.
Rendering hair in the Maya
software renderer vs. mental ray for Maya
Refer to the following
table for the differences between rendering hair in the Maya software
renderer and mental ray for Maya.
NoteThe way that lighting
and shading is calculated on Hair 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.
| Hair 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
|
