Oooh! *wags*

I pretty much waited and hoped for some more jaql godness from you.

you could probably get the rest of the fur if you render it out on a separate render layer. just make sure you also add your lights to the layer as well.

maybe, but fur seems to look like crap up close regardless what I do.

eh, just need to up the density and map size.... also, you have to add fur shadowing attributes to the lights individually (the fur won't just self shadow, unless you are using final gather in mental ray)... but if you go to the fur menu, and go to fur shadowing attributes and select that with the light you have selected, it will give you controls for shadowing the fur (this is if you don't already know that :P)

well I do know how to shadow fur, it's just that it always seems to behave weirdly, for instance, I spend a good 5 hours trying to get fur to look right in one lighting, but as soon as I chance the lights, it looks like crap again.
I think it's got something to do with the fur's specular setting which always reacts different to lights than regular meshes.

well, you could try messing with the lights settings (i tend to use spotlight, area light, and directional) and set a spotlight to quadratic decay, which is the rate real light decays. but you will have to bump the intensity up to a pretty high number like 500-1000 or more depending on how far away the light is. a quick way to check if it is the specular settings is to un-check the emit specular box. lastly if the specular highlights are o bright, try mapping a fractal into the specular color.

but honestly... i really like the way your model looks painterly anyways :P

If I may make a quick, subjective suggestion from experience:

Ditch maya fur and shell out the 500$ for shave and haircut if you can.
Much better look, much more comfortable to use, and renders faster.


Keep in mind that this is a subjective opinion from someone who spent about 2 weeks trying to get maya fur to comply and failed ^^