I'm building more and more characters for animation, and it occurs to me that my collection of hairstyles is rather small. I'd like to ask the community here what hairstyles are absolute must-have for any Poser user. I'd like suggestions for V4, V3, M4 and M3 primarily and for hair props/conforming hair instead of dynamic hair.

Your suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Anything by Plus3D and Mairy, they are superb and full of options!

For short V4 styles, Tequila and/or Chocolate.

For long V4, I generally use Quarkers Sapphire Fox.  Versatile and realistic.

Rievel is good for both V4 and M3 and Portia is also great for V4 (both by April YSH ).

Klebnor

For long, Bliss Vision is my favorite (V3/M3)
Short, Ricardi hair for M4, Paris65 by FK Design fits several models. (All her hairs are great, actually, though I'm not always keen on the painted textures.)

I still like some hair models by Kozaburo even though he hasn't made anything new in a while. Plus3D, as already mentioned, and outoftouch has some nice ones, some that are free.

Roz hair (here), Anything by Quarker (Daz3d),  Porthia hair(Daz3d), FKdesigns twin(3dcommune),

August hair, if it hasn't been mentioned yet. Aery soul...I think...
it's a @#$% getting old...;)

Strictly speaking of styles you are going to need some long loose hair, some kind of bob cut, a pony tail, and maybe pigtails.

Yes, definitely you'll need variety. And quality of course.

I'm planning on putting up low-to-mid quality renders of bunch of different hairstyles on my believable3d.com site in the next few days - just to give an at-a-glance look a what a bunch of different styles look like without a lot of playing with morphs.

I have just a short style , a collar length and a very long hair , mainly kozoboro (?) free hairs with a few from Daz bundles. I use the short style for noth men and women . You want to be very choosy because the hair is pretty expensive .   An option is to learn to paint hair and do some in photoshop, that way you can extend short hair styles and get a more credible wind blown effect or gravity.

Painting is an option if... you're good in Photoshop... and don't need to recreate the same character over and over. Then continuity becomes tricky.

Personally, I like to render everything if possible.

As for hair being expensive - definitely. I believe the Bice/OutofTouch sale is still on right now, though, and this is a great time to pad the runtime. 25% off PLUS buy 1 get 1 free means that you can essentially be picking up hair for somewhere around 60% off regular price.

Must have? There's no must have..... whatever you like you should choose. Once you decide a style, you pick hair that matches that style. General must have don't work, what you want to achieve decides what hair you need.

Be creative...... step out of the box..... don't be like the 90% that uses all the same stuff. Create you own style, pick hair you like, that fits your style.

Quote - I'd like suggestions for V4, V3, M4 and M3 primarily and for hair props/conforming hair instead of dynamic hair.

Your suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hmm as an animator most of the long static hair styles listed here will look
very stiff and fake once your female character starts moving anyway.
it too bad poser dynamic hair was never really suitable for animation.
Im just Glad I have Cinema4d with its world class hair module.

I think is there no "must have" only what you want ;-)

Painting is not an option for animations.
If the animation is meant to be toonish or manga in style, you may get away with prop based or conforming hair styles. But if you mean to do (semi)realistic animations - and from your choice of characters, I assume you want to do that, there's simply no substitute for strand based hair. except for very short hair styles.

i think you should say more about what you have in mind.  some hair looks great as long as it never casts shadows, otherwise your rendering time will go through the roof.  do you want long hair or short?  what will your people be doing?  hair doesn't move that much for about 75% of what people do in real life (unless it's windy), so if you're not doing action stuff, morphs might be enough for your animation.  lots of action, and movement is a bigger problem.

personally, i've never found any one hair style that worked all the time.  they've all had pluses and minuses, and i almost always go through about 8 different hair styles before settling on one or giving up and deciding just to rely on postwork.  not because i haven't bought some of the best, because i have.  but i've always found it hard to fit poses.

the ones i use all the time are Koz's Long Hair Evolution, Maelwenn's Vanessa Hair.

i liked Leah Hair from DAZ because of the body handles.  there's a product in the store here that says it lets you add body handles to any hair.  you might want to purchase that.

Wow, a lot of good suggestions there. I do have some of the styles suggested already, but I very much appreciate the other suggestions made.

@markschum and timag: Painting's not an option for me. The hair has to be able to stand up to animation.

@wolf359: Yes, stiff hair can be a problem if you are animating. Thatr having been said, I'm looking at ways around the issue.

@svdl: I've never been overly happy with strand-based hair. It takes too long to render and can look rubbish, even in animations. Nevertheless, it can be a useful tool if needed.

Thanks again for the suggestions everyone. I'm already putting my purchase list together based on what you've recommended.

oh, and just to mention the product that adds body handles to hair is new.  so you don't have to look hard for it. 

Anything by AprilYSH.

And the wedgecut if you don't have it for the guys.

Has no one mentioned Neftis yet? She has some very good hair styles at DAZ with a good range of fits (she still supports V3, S3, D3, M3, along with the new figures).

Ali's HR-021-V4 hair, Gwenith hair and others by lady littlefox (RDNA) plus the previously mentioned hairs from quarker and fk design (especially divine braids III)