Rendering xGEn fur with Pixar's Renderman

xGen and Renderman are not the best of friends. xGen is super finnicky in it's setup and most of all when trying to render

Some Rules I learned the hard way

• set the Maya project somewhere else that is not in the documents folder
• don't have any spaces or weird characters in the directory or file path
• load the Renderman plugin and select it as your renderer BEFORE loading the xgen plugin 
• save scene both before opening xgen and after creating the description
• if using OSX add these lines to your Maya.env file

RMANTREE = /Applications/Pixar/RenderManProServer-20.2

RMSTREE = /Applications/Pixar/RenderManStudio-20.9-maya2016.5

RMANFB = it

export export PATH=$PATH:$RMANTREE/bin:$RMSTREE/bin/it.app/Contents/MacOS:$RMSTREE/bin/slim.app/Contents/MacOS

PYTHONPATH = $RMSTREE/scripts

DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH:/Applications/Autodesk/maya2016/Maya.app/Contents/MacOS

• ensure that the paths are correct and you change the Renderman file name to whatever version you are currently using
• if you are using Maya 2016 and are on Service Pack 5 or 6 be sure to install Renderman 2016.5 which is different than the version 2016
• sometimes it helps to render the image externally
• be sure to apply an RMS hair shader to the fur
• for some reason it helps to have the mental ray and the alembic plugins loaded as well
• be sure to set the renderer to renderman in the xgen preview/output settings
• do not have anything parented under the main mesh that you want to have the groom on at the time that you create the xgen description

If you manage to follow all of these it should work. Probably.