How to Shade in Solidagles Arnold renderer

This tutorial covers 10 Shaders for Arnold and how to use aiStandard shader which is 

anything but standard

For Video

How to Render Yeti Hair in Arnold

if you prefer to watch a video: http://youtu.be/LdUz9CAdeog

This is a question that many have asked and when looking for answers around the internet, its hard to find what to do. not even the Yeti 1.2 documentation page gives clear instruction as to what is supposed to be done. but after looking for an hour and tinkering around a bit I have found out what the hell must be done to render yeti fur in the arnold renderer.

First things first. you must make sure you have Yeti installed an your C:\ drive

After you have checked that you need to open that folder and then open "pgYetiMaya.mod". Open this file in word pad or a similar application and change the line that says "path_to_yeti_root" to C:\"the name of your yeti directory", for example mine would be C:\Yeti-v1.3.10_Maya2014-windows64

next you want to edit your system environment variables. Don't be worried this isn't as scary as it may sound. open your start menu and search environment you should see under control panel "edit the system environment variables", if you have trouble finding this than ask Google.  To open it you will need administrative permissions. once open click the "environment variables" button which should bring up a window like this...

under the heading System variables look for "MAYA_MODULE_PATH" if this isnt their then click "New..." and name the new variable "MAYA_MODULE_PATH" and the value to be you yeti directory in my case "C:\Yeti-v1.3.10_Maya2014-windows64". if you do however have this variable already then you need to select it and click "Edit..." this will then bring up a window...

If you already have this variably created, "MAYA_MODULE_PATH", then it already has a value, so in order to separate the values you need to put a semicolon between them.for example value1;value2 so you type in the path to your yeti directory but make sure their is a semicolon between your values. 

we are nearly done setting up you yeti hair to render with Arnold but their is just a  few more things.

making sure you have closed pgYetiMaya.mod you can now open Maya 2014, this wont work in Maya 2015 because neither Yeti or Arnold are available for that version of Maya yet. in maya open your plugin manager...

you should have mtoa(arnold) loaded and also pgYetiMaya (Yeti) of you dont see Yeti, as i asume you will already have arnold up and working, then you need to click browse and navagate to your Yeti plugins folder which will be in "C:\(yeti folder)\plugins". after yeti is loaded you should have a yeti tab and icons as well as a menu for yeti. 

the next step is one you will have to repeat every time you open Maya and want to render yeti hair in Arnold

you need to open your Arnold rendering settings and go to the system tab and under procedual search path enter you yeti directory bin folder, "C:\(Yeti version)\bin" 

and thats it you should now be able to render yeti hair to your harts delight in Arnold

Introduction to Animation

I am bringing out a new tutorial series called "Introduction to animation". the first episode has been realesed and its the cliche Bouncing ball tutorial where i teach you the basics of bouncing a ball.

Next Time: The following episode will be on how the weight effects the ball.
Stay tuned for updates.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6G8E0zS8FQ6_Xdm9X2mgyOxRRpCCYwDf

Blend Swap Head Model

A head i modeled in blender and is available for download at http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/67374

Youtube Channel

A Link to my youtube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/4100robster?feature=mhee

It contains almost all my work so far