I was wondering if there is a way to make a model look as though it has fur whether it be through a shader or some other method. I recently came across a benchmark which made a Torus look as though it was covered with fur.[urlhttp://downloads.guru3d.com/OpenGL-Fur-Rendering-Benchmark-download-1717.html#download[/url]
Any Ideas?
I did start working on a fur shader once that would use multiple transparent layers of the model with a slightly texture on each layer. But I ended up writing an explosion shader. 
You may be interested in seeing this, though:
graphics.cs.brown.edu/games/Stee … index.html
It has been used to implement fur.
Furmark is one of the toughest GPU benchmarks out there 
But as to the subject itself, one way to fake fur is to do it like many games do hair: using alpha mapped geometry. How well this works depends on the overall scenario, like the shape of the model, viewing distance etc. It’s probably not a very good solution for anything too realistic and won’t be very easy to animate for wind and other environmental effects. I happened to google up this tutorial which shows a pretty nice result combined with normal maps: http://www.paultosca.com/varga_hair.html
I did some more research and came across a fur shader for another game engine or something, however I have absolutely no experience with shaders so I don’t really know where to start. http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=5012