The big problem with Shag/Hair for Max isn't Maxwell's ability to render the huge amount of poly's, but from Max being able to convert a convincing number of hairs into geometry. Based on strenous research (ok, I Googled it

), the average human has approximately 100,000 hairs on their head (quite a bit less for guys like me). So far the most hairs I've been able to convert were 14,000 with only five segments per hair. Anything above that will crash.
What you can do, is convert the hairs to splines. Right now I'm in the middle of converting 30,000 hairs with 30 segments each into splines. But it's been going for a couple hours now, and it's not even up to 50% complete. Of course, you have to set the spline as renderable, which will create in the backgound a whole bunch of poly's. I'll let you know if Max can handle this as it's sending the job to Maxwell.
"Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." - Tom Stoppard
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http://nws.carbonmade.com/