If you are using the default hair and fur tool that comes with max I don't think I can be of much help. However I would assume that you would just need to isolate the faces and apply the modifier to that. Anyone else wanna try and help with this?

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You need to have your model complete and your UVs unwrapped so you can specify hair properties based on painted maps.
unwrap the final mesh with unwrap uvw then, either in photoshop or zbrush paint several different greyscale maps for things such as density, hair length, and colour maps for root and tip colour.
apply the hair/fur mod to the entire mesh and load the maps into the various slots.
You can mess with all the settings to get clumping and frizzyness as well as use the styling tools to brush the hair into different directions.

the max tool is pretty hard to use compared to mayas fur system, mainly because in maya you have artisan tools to quickly paint properties directly onto the mesh.

In max you could try using vertex colours to affect the hairs by using a vertex paint modifier and then a vertex colour map in the hair mod. but for the fur colour there is no better option than to simply use the diffuse colour map as the root/tip colours. maybe using a darkened version of the same map for the root and a lighter one for the tips.

Also if you have access to vray, vray fur can give some nice results but there are no dynamics or styling tools.

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Now I remember I used to use this method to paint grass into a scene.

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Anybody's going to post a good list of tools and plug-ins for 3DSMAX, someday?
I'm not pro at all, but I can guess it's no all about talent, when it comes to practice: tools do their part too!
This furry thing sounds as a good starting point: spit the name of a good plug-in and most important report 3DSMAX versions it can be applied to.
I'm using 2009, but I can put my sticky hands on a copy of Maya 2009 too......

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No Gods but Yourself!! >.<

Vray is always the first plugin I install for max. Very good renderer.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

for me I used to use a variety of plugins for max 8 and 9 some of which have been made redundant or have not been supported beyond max 9. moving up to max 2009 and now 2011 I had only 2 essential plugins Vray and CAT. now CAT is built into max 2011 which is really usefull. Sometimes when I'm really pushed for time I simply cant rig a character from scratch in maya so I cheat and do it super quick in max using a CAT rig preset (im supposed to use maya at work now). Other than that there were a few tree plugins I liked to use to save time, ONYX tree pro and NATFX. and the IVY generator is a great thing. go to [Link to www.maxplugins.de] theres loads of stuff there to try out. When I was learning max I got great pleasure from trying all sorts of different plugins without knowing what half of them did.

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