"Wow, that's the total opposite of what I do, ynsaen. I drape and never style. I find the hair room difficult and slow to use " I'm going to explain something that I've picked up about the hair room in my endeavors, and hope that it translates well for iamonk (who shouldn't cry), and sorta let's Ajax (an anyone else that peeks in) why I describe using the hair room in the above manner. I think that Ajax's approach is the usual one -- ie, the one that folks will do more or less "out of habit" because that's what they expected the hair room to be. As a result, they get frustrated with the hair room, and they go very slow in it, and they have a pretty unsatisfied view of the hair room. The key point, though, is the "expectation". Thanks to the wonderfully perceptive manual that comes with it, and the way that the community originally anticipated the hair to be, the hair room is misunderstood. The drape and dynamic motions of the hair were intended specifically to be used in conjunction with the windforce tool. If the windforce tool is not used, these functions are actually sorta working against the hair room. I came to this conclusion from esssentially sitting down and looking at the way that Poser handled the hair during my investigations into the dynamic hair file format. I do not believe that the hair room was properly documented in it's usage, and the functions and flow of the room and the way the functions are described in the manual sorta back this up. THe dynamic elements are always called into play with a description of using the wind force in the manual, while none of the rest of it is. Furthermore, in my absolutely unscientific and likely unethical experiments on unsuspecting hairs, I noted that the collsions actually worked better when the wind force was employed. This led me to play with the windforce a bit, and that little component has some rather interesting capabilities itself, but is even less well documented than the hair room. I believe, based on the overall performance improvements in the program and in the hair in general, and in the layout and design of the tools, that that first reaction is wrong -- essentially, I'm saying that curious labs totally missed what the community really wanted, but instead gave us a different tool. If, for example, I wanted to have my character's hair blowing off to the side with a few wispy tendrils caressing her cheek as she mourned for her love, dead in her arms, I would use the style tools to make it look like that first. Then I would set up the dynamics and include the wind force -- essentially to "tweak" the effect and give it that little "breath" (sorry) of fresh air (not sorry). I would NOT, however, use the dynamics to make the hair fall down around her head -- that's not what it appears to me they were designed for, and the basis of that assessment is how poorly they do that when they do it so much better the other way. The other indicator of this was the hairs that are currently in place in P5. Their dynamic settings are not active. In other words, the hair that comes with P5 (which was developed to showcase that very hair) isn't animated. It's styled. So it's basically not an "easy" thing to do (you have to learn how to use the style tools, which are somewhat clumsy, and you have to group your hair properly). The dynamics are not intended to be used to shape the hair, they are intended to affect the hair after it has been shaped. I can't speak to lock ups -- those have, more often than not, proven to be system dependent issues -- but I can speak to the frustration of using the hair room in the way that seems to be the "natural" and intuitive way. I think that part of this confusion stems greatly from the fact that the cloth room actually works the OTHER way -- for cloth, dynamics ARE used to shape it as well as modify it afterwards. But the cloth room is a differnet creature altogether. I hope this makes sense. ynsaen :)

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)