Create fur shading and shadows using the mental ray for Maya renderer

The NVIDIA® mental ray® renderer supports both Depth Map Shadows and Ray Traced Shadows on Fur.

To set up a light for fur self-shading and detailed shadow maps for the mental ray for Maya renderer

1. Select the light you want to set up.
2. In the light’s Attribute Editor (Ctrl+a), go to the mental ray section and in the Shadow Map Attributes subsection, turn on Shadow Map and click the Take Settings from Maya button. (This does not take the shadow map bias details from the above Shadows section.)
3. In the Render Settings window, select mental ray as your renderer. Go to the Quality tab and select ProductionRapidFur from the Quality Presets drop-down list.
   Tip:

   For precision, increase the Samples value in the mental ray Shadow Maps section of the light’s Attribute Editor. When using detailed shadow maps, use a very low Softness value or you may experience noisy shadows.

Note: For information on how to create fur shading and shadows using the Maya Software renderer, see Maya Fur.