I've gotten really interested in the fur via alpha mapped dots: example from bobo And I was wondering if there is any way, within maya, to take some paint effects grass or fur, place 3 or 4 planes bisecting the grass/fur and run a MEL script to say "wherever a blade of grass/fur passes through a plane, render a cross…
FWIW, quick to do in 3ds max, using TouchTextureMaker script. Maybe there's a similar tool for Maya? http://www.maxim-capra.com/main.php?men1=m_work&con=c_codmxs
What if you create a 3d texture, like the rock one. Then assign the 3d texture to your planes. Sinces its a 3d texture it will sample different parts of the texture based upon its position in the 3d texture space. Then use the render to texture function to bake out each plane with its own texture. You should get nice…