Fast Ambient Occlusion Rendering on Fur (paper)

"Rendering accurate ambient occlusion on fur is a time and memory expensive task. Though the results are very accurate and take all objects into account, the visual quality of the resulting image is often no compensation for the rendertime required. In the following chapter a way is described to effectively fake the look of ambient occlusion in fur and thus suggest the existence of an ambient lightsource. [...]"

phongShaveWrite (MEL)

This script automates animated shave rib file generation and cares for folder and file numbering. Via the user-interface, the artist can choose to have options like voxels or compression turned on or off. The generated rib files can easily be integrated back into the maya scene with rmanPhongDRAControls for example