hair - alphas or plugins

[sdmolyne]

Hi all

I would like a little advice on making hair.

There seems to be many different ways to make hair. Im thinking of using alpha planes for making a females long hair. With maya 7.0's capabilities, is there a better and faster way of producing good looking hair. I have used Shave and a haircut in the past and i found it tricky and very slow to render.

many thanks

steve

[FutureMan]

There is a trade off, alpha maps work faster but can't give the dynamic motion simulation from using actual hairs/splines/meshes.

Will you need shots of her hair flowing and blowing in the wind? If so you might be stuck using a more complicated setup than alpha mapped opacity planes.