Shave's rendering is an extension of z-buffer based rendering. The extension allows for transparency in shadow casting, and is why shave hair looks like real hair. It has a soft and natural quality to it as light filters through it that just doesn't look like CG.

Anisotropic highlights, backlighting, soft self shadowing, and subpixel rendering contribute to the realism.

Mapping includes color texture, and is fully animatable over time. Cut maps, for instance, let you grow hair along it's rest path.

Lighting reacts to any type of lightsource (with some limitation), and to radiosity in LW 6.5 and BMRT.

Because shave's buffer based rendering, there is no limit to strand count or complexity. Scenes with millions of hair fibers are typical on very small machines.

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