Inspired by MB's fur image using replication, difficulty in finding specific hair styles and my own cheapness, I've decided to attempt photorealistic strand-based hair without using any programs or plug-ins other than those I already own. Any insight you may wish to share is indeed welcome. So, to start off, I decided to try faking hair first (although I was really going for blue grass with this one). I created a 1024x1024 alpha map (uh-huh, I realized afterward that 512 probably would've been fine), placed this over a blue plane, and replicated this 5,000 times on a sphere. I was only using the color and alpha channels in the shader. Not bad looking, but I must have run out of memory or had another problem, because 42 hours into the render the computer locked up. All I have is this screengrab.