Hairs:

When I started working on the hair I approached it as I always do.  The first step was to clone the polygons that would “grow” hairs from the head, to a new unrenderable mesh.  I then added hairs and started combing and testing many different possibilities. Here are a few pointers for when working with Max's hair:

Variation – This is the key to making your hair look interesting.  Always try to test out how much you can push parameters that will create variations in your hair, such as rand scale, hue/value variation, frizz tip, randomise etc.

Passes – It is often recommended to test how your hair looks when more than one pass is used.  The higher the parameter, the softer the hair will render!

Multi-strand Parameters – Hair often tends to clamp up and this feature simulates it nicely.  I usually turn it on with root slay having a larger parameter than tip slay.

Lights and Shadows – This will make all the difference about how your hair is going to render.  Usually, using spotlights with shadow maps are ideal for hair.  An important decision that always needs to be made when working with hair is, if you want to render the hair at buffer or MR prim mode, buffer usually renders faster and looks softer, but MR prim works well with many different light and shadow types. (Fig.18 -30)