Editing Main Render Settings (section)

=== Maximum Fur Layers ===
This setting only affects the quality of the shader when viewed up-close (ie. hugging/snuggling/sticking-your-nose-in-a-mirror distance). At a more typical conversational distance the shader is usually rending around 8-10 layers, regardless of this setting. Each time the distance doubles the number of layers drops by half, and when the number of layers drops below 1 the fur stops rendering.

Note that the 32-layer option has a moderate performance hit of about 5% versus the 24-layer option, even when rendering only 8-10 layers. Because of this, the 24-layer option is the default, and is recommended for most uses.

The performance hit of using 24-layers instead of 16 is much less, roughly 1-2%. However, if your avatar has a high poly count, you may want to limit the layers to 16 anyway, to reduce stuttering on lower end GPUs when hugging/snuggling/sticking-your-nose-in-a-mirror.

The Lite version of the shader has a fixed limit of 16 layers, and does not display this option.