Render the hair

When you modify hair attributes, many of these changes are not visible in the scene view and you must render the hair. Rendering the nHair allows you to see which aspects of the hair style need work to make it look more realistic.

Before rendering the nHair, you can set the Start Position, which is also known initial state, of the simulation. In this case, you want the simulation to begin after Gravity acts on nHair curves and they come to a settled state. In this section of the lesson, you set the Start Position of the curves so that are at rest in the first frame of the simulation.

To set nHair Start Position

1. Rewind the simulation to the start frame.
2. Play the simulation for at least 60 frames.
3. To ensure that you are displaying the current position, select nHair > Display > Current Position.
4. Select the hair system.
5. Select nHair > Set Start Position > From Current.

   You may need to repeat steps 1 to 5 until the nHair is completely settled at the start frame

   In the next section of the lesson, you render a single frame of your nHair simulation.

Before rendering, be sure to set the appropriate Render Settings.

To turn on the mental ray for Maya renderer

1. Select Window > Rendering Editors > Render Settings.

   The Render Settings window appears.

2. In the Render Settings window, set Render Using setting to mental ray.
   
   TipIf mental ray does not appear under the list of renderers, you must load the mental ray plug-in via the Plug-in Manager. Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager and select Loaded for the Mayatomr.mll plug-in.
3. Click the Quality tab.
4. In the Raytrace/Scanline Quality section, set Max Sample Level to 2.
5. Click Close.

To render the hair using the mental ray for Maya renderer

1. Play the simulation to the frame you want to render.
2. From the Status Line, click the Render Current Frame icon.

   The hair model is rendered using the mental ray for Maya renderer. Your rendered hair model should look something like the image below.