This paper presents a new method for modeling and rendering fur with a wide variety of furstyles. We simulate virtual fur using shell textures - a multiple layers of textured slices for its generality and efficiency. As shell textures usually suffer from the inherent visual gap errors due to the uniform discretization nature, we present the angle-split shell textures (ASST) approach, which classifies the shell textures into different types with different numbers of texture layers, by splitting the angle space of the viewing angles between fur orientation and view direction. Our system can render the fur with biological patterns, and utilizes vector field and scalar field on ASST to control the geometric variations of the furry shape. Users can intuitively shape the fur by applying the combing, blowing, and interpolating effects in real time. Our approach is intuitive to implement without using complex data structures, with real-time performance for dynamic fur appearances. © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.