I think I'm on to something with this Eco-Hair idea. I created a simple rig that attaches to V3 to use as the base for adding eco-hair widgets. You simply attach the rig inside Vue and then add eco-hair widgets to whichever part of the rig you like. The rig is made up of 5 areas - the cap, temple ring, middle ring, lower ring and the neck ring. After getting the right eco formation on any part of the rig, you make the underlying material portion of the rig invisible and move on to the next part until the hair is built up. I still need to figure out the right type of hair widgets to use and play with the widget textures a bit, but I think I'm on the right track here. Any ideas or comments?

Looks very cool! I think the hair widgets could use some more transparency, they still look somewhat too solid. Maybe a widget consisting of two helices, one inside the other? Anyway, very interesting work!

How about this one. I made the hair widget thinner and added a trans map. I still need to tweak the hair texture and specular highlights.

Getting better and better! One of the definite advantages of this method is the avoidance of the "flat" look of standard Poser transmapped hair.