Creating Fur in Maya

The following is the method, which i learnt. Please feel free to comment on it.

Creating Maya Fur on Poly mesh

1. In Maya, Fur is created with respect to the UV information.
2. Make sure if there is polySmooth node, the smooth UV option is OFF
3. The Unwrap should occupy the complete 0 to 1 space in the UV texture editor.
4. Try to maintain the basics of Unwrapping with respect to texturing. i.e., avoiding stretching of textures.
5. Try to avoid UV seams at obvious regions on the model. If possible try to unwrap in a square or rectangular shape.
6. Make sure that the Uvs are spaced according to the requirement of fur in the respective region.

Note: Smaller the UV space – lesser fur will be generated, vice versa.

7. After the UV unwrap is done, attach a new fur description and apply a preset on to it to understand the flow. This is a very good starting point.
8. The polar attribute of the fur description corresponds to the direction of the fur flow.

Note: Tweak the polar attribute to check the flow of fur.

9. Do a preview render to see the distribution of fur on the object.
10. If there is less fur generated at certain regions, try to tweak the UV space to increase the fur count. Keep in mind to avoid texture stretching.
11. Once the fur generation is uniform, start painting the direction of the fur.
12. When painting the direction, turn off the color feedback this increases the performance.
13. Use bigger brush radius and paint the overall direction on the object.
14. Use a smaller brush radius while painting near the seams. Bigger brush causes flipping of fur at the seams.
15. The UV samples in the fur feedback node can be increased according to the detail required on the map being painted. If the samples are increased the system performance goes down.
16. The region where fur is not required in the object can be achieved by painting the baldness map. The effective method would be to remove those UV and transferring or copying it to a new UV set.

Note: Only one UV set can be attached to a fur description.

17. For the color attributes a texture map (with flat colors painted in it) or a flat color can be used.
18. In the details section of the attribute editor, you’ll find the Map Multiplier and other Noise attributes that can be used to tweak the maps painted on to the respective fur attributes.
19. Global scale in the attribute editor helps to control the overall look of the fur.
20. A custom equalizer map can be created to fill the areas where there is less fur generated even after tweaking the UV space.
21. A 512 X 512 map for any attribute will suffice, the size can be increased with respect to the scene requirement.
22. After Baking the fur attributes, make sure the expressions created during the process has a relative path.
23. When you want to save the fur scene file onto another project directory or location. First copy all the fur attribute maps onto the respective folder in the target location and save the file.