LcUberShader.cgfx - A Maya Viewport Shader for Fun and Learning.
Mental ray rendering fur with passes. Whatewer you use- maya fur, or shave and haircut - rules and workflow will be the same. 1) NEVER USE RAYTRACE WITH FUR!
Any rule you can violate, if you understand them clearly. This is not exclusion-if you need to render fury sphere with 10 000 hairs- no problem: turn on FG, soft raytrace shadows, use occlusion and nothing terrible happend. But when you will have deal with real fury character, grass or any other scene with a lot of fur- raytrace can cause more headache then bennefit. So one more time:NEVER, NEVER USE RAYTRACE WITH FUR! Painting with Polygons.
MAYA Tutorial, Texturing and Shading. Materials are a critical part of creating attractive images and animation in a 3D program.
Materials interact with lights, so lighting drives some material choices; for example, if your overall lighting is bright, you might need to make your scene materials somewhat more matte and light absorbing so that they don't blow out when hit by bright lights. What do we mean by "materials"? It's a catch-all term to describe all aspects of what a surface looks like. At first glance, beginners usually notice the surface color—red, wood brown, metallic silver.
To an artist, however, there are many other factors: An object isn't just metallic silver, for example—it's a mirrored smooth finish that relies on the reflected surroundings for its appearance.