Thanks, aRTbee. You're right about Transparency_Falloff ... hadn't noticed that was at 0.6. If that's contributing, that's a good thing, since it's something I can control the amount of—different amounts for darker or lighter hair.

But nonetheless it still does not make complete sense.

For one, if there is no skullcap and the hair groups are parented directly to the figure's head, the hair should be providing shadowing on the head ... but it does not. Is all the shadowing here completely illusion? If so, why does the hair not cast shadows onto the scalp? I always have casts shadows set to on.

Meanwhile, I've got more experimenting to do....

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Hardware: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI MAG570 Tomahawk X570/Zotac Geforce GTX 1650 Super 4GB/32GB OLOy RAM

Software: Windows 10 Professional/Poser Pro 11/Photoshop/Postworkshop 3