Okay, thanks for the advice. I seem to remember now some of those people with the photo-real Max renders mentioning Vray. I'm still new at CG, and being self-taught, some things are still beyond me.

Well rats, that won't help me in this situation. I'm stuck working with whatever Maya has to offer.

Hi, I'm new here, looking for help!

I normally build miniatures for film work, but with the turn of filmmaking to digital, I'm forcing myself to learn 3D in order to keep up with the industry. I...

You're just wanting to extrude the face? It appears from the screen grab that you already have the "face" command selected. If you click on the face, it should turn from red to green (or, it does in...

I ran into this problem yesterday. Under your leaf material attributes>Raytrace Options> turn down the Shadow Attenuation. That worked for me.