used it only with the p4 renderengine, and was disapointed. And the p4 render was very slow and the hair looked more like a old brush. Using it with the firefly render it looks cool and it renders faster than with the p4 render.

i just read that in the movie "stuard little 2" they used over a half a million hairs only for his head! ok, vicky doesn't have that many facial hair but if you want really convincing pictures with p5 hair - you need good hardware.

Hardware isn't an issue. Geometry defined hair like that used in P5 is never going to be able to compete with procedural hair used in more advanced apps and renderers (including Monster's Inc and Stuart Little). Like it or not P5 is still based on the P4 dinosaur core code. Given its excessive resource usage, you're probably never going to see much more hair in P5 than you are seeing now, barring a 64 bit port. Even then, the geometry solution is always going to trail far behind what competitive products can achieve. Bill

Mr. Bill.... "the geometry solution is always going to trail far behind what competitive products can achieve" Just curious - - - what competitive products are you thinking of? Is there something else out there that is in the same price category as Poser (a competitor) that does what you are referring to? thanks -

I'm still thinking it looks like the best way to go will be to have a small "helmet head" hair base with loose P5 strands growing through it. That way you've got a solid mass but also are able to give a sense of motion with the strands. Probably a lot less strands.