ok - have been pushing on with this fly, but not having much luck.i used fur for most of his back and then added paint fx eyelashes for the bristles on his back. I used the paint effects mesh quality tool to lessen the geometry. i wanted to render in mental ray, so I converted them to polygons, but every time i render the screen goes blank and i get this in the script editor -

// Error: (Mayatomr) : unexpected internal exception during scene rendering, please report //
// Info (Mayatomr): Aborted //

i've turned off ray tracing and set the scanline to rapid in mental ray.

i then read that you don't have to convert to polygons now as mental ray can now render paint effects, but i still haven't had any luck.

does anyone have any ideas?