Ok, so one of the things that I think using strand densities and root/tip thicknesses more akin to an 'accurate' model is that it reveals some of the problems in how dynamic hair pieces are made and subsequently react to materials.

DH needs to be optimised so it will drape and render quickly. What this means is that one growth hair is used to represent many rendered hairs via the strand density setting. One of the problems with this is that all those rendered hairs tend to follow their guide hairs rather uniformly - in real life there would be a much greater degree of randomness. We see this particularly clearly when a high kink setting is used. All those hairs clumped together form a mass that react as a single entity to the material properties assigned via the hair node. This is increased by the use of high root/tip widths that effectively mean that each hair has a larger surface area to react to light. This is why I think DH usually looks unrealistic - because we can 'see' the way it has been (over) optimised.

This is particularly the case when a very low poly skullcap has been used as a base - few growth hairs representing very many rendered hairs. Very little room for randomness.

One way to lessen the perception of the way DH is optimised is to use much higher poly skullcaps - more growth hairs that can 'do their own thing' and don't necessarily have to represent so many rendered hairs. The result is an overall more randomised effect, where hairs don't act so much as uniform clumped groups.

In one of the examples that I posted earlier (posted again above) I used a moderately high poly skullcap and forced a randomisation of the growth hairs by allowing them to dynamically drape and collide with each other. I also used a realistic overall strand density of about 100000 hairs with very low root & tip widths. The result is an extreme 'messy' style but it's interesting because I used a hair node setting with quite a high level of shine. This shine hardly registers at all because the clumps of hair are so much more randomly positioned than in a normal DH piece. It far more accurately represents what I think happens in a real head of hair where there is a much higher degree of randomness, even where the hair falls in curls or clumps. It doesn't attempt to look like the photos you posted but hopefully you can see some correlation in the appearance of this rendered result to what you are looking for.

Now, in terms of the problem with shine, we can just tone down the specular in the hair node - easy -  but I don't think this necessarily solves the whole problem. IMO only by using higher res skullcaps with much highre strand densities  and lower root/tip thicknesses can we start to achieve the randomness and fineness of real hair. The improved speed of the 64 bit PP2012 has at least allowed the possibility of exploring this with reasonable render times. The draping is still painfully slow so of no use to animators, but I'm loving the results and the freedom to play with this more freely.

 

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

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