Carrara hair is incredibly realistic since it is strand based, and is dynamic as well, meaning that it is interactive with scene forces and therefore ideally suited for animations as well as still renders.  However the hair room can be intimidating to use, and finding the right settings for realistic hair movement while animated can initially be difficult.

Over the past week (thanks in large part to PhilW's tutorial series) I feel like I've had a breakthrough in understanding the Carrara hair room and what settings to employ to achieve realistic hair movement/simulations.  Check out a few of these test animations to see my progress (I've made mistakes on some of these that I now know how to correct and do better, but I'll just show them anyway to give an idea):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofWd1iAfv4c  (my very first hair animation test)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oq7GW9X_IU  (tucking hair behind her ear, I made a fairly basic mistake on this one that I know how to correct now)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbq-yv-ieJA  (a more complex hair style used on this one, where the proxy figure tucks hair behind her ear again)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDD_AgW6-Fg  (hair blowing in the 'wind' through the application of directional force.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePlppX0Zx9I  (V4 going from pose to pose, movement of hair as she moves)

The really great news is that creating Carrara hair and animating it is incredibly easy and quick once you understand a few of the tools and the basic concepts and settings for your animations.  Seriously, I'm doing hair sims that take less than a minute to calculate (usually less than half a minute) and doing test render animations that take less than 5 minutes to render to see how the hair is moving and refine settings.

Carrara hair:

• Looks far more real than prop/figure hair (actually Carrara hair with the right settings just looks real, period)

• Renders faster than prop and figure hair

• Will animate easily and be far more realistic than any sort of prop hair

• In my opinion is the best dynamic strand-based hair solution within the hobbyist-priced software level, and in fact the simulation quality of what Carrara can do with the right settings is on a par with what you see in CG movies by professionals. 

The nice surprise is that Carrara hair is actually very easy to use, I would say even easier/faster than prop hair and figuring out all the endless morphs and parameters for prop/figure hair, and Carrara hair is far more natural and realistic.  So I wanted to put together a tutorial to quickly show, using a very simple hairstyle, how easy Carrara hair is to create, use and pose for animations, and to show which tools in the hair room you need to know how to use, as well as give some settings for realistic natural hair movement within animations.  And animated hair can be stopped at any given frame to do incredibly realistic still renders too, so this stuff isn't just for animators.

I've broken the tutorial into parts for ease in viewing, but bear in mind that even though overall this tutorial is more than an hour long, this is only because I'm trying to take the time to explain all the tools and settings as it goes.  In real life, once you've mastered these tools, you can build an animate this hair very quickly - maybe 5 minutes to create and animate the hair simulation, and another 5 minutes to render out a 4 second animation. 

Another tutorial will follow sometime soon (when I have time to put it together) giving more details of how to make more complex hairstyles, but I'm hoping that just playing with creating a very simple and quick hairstyle will give people some familiarity with the hair room and how easy and quick it is to work with Carrara hair and achieve highly realistic hair renders and animations.

Carrara Hair Tutorial part 1:  Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC1AV-hcsC4

Carrara Hair Tutorial part 2: Scene setup and Low Poly Proxy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNHOTqi07fE

Carrara Hair Tutorial part 3:  Grow Region Tool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av4OvvgEbHg

Carrara Hair Tutorial part 4: Guide Hair Tools
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZiHp603ypM

Cararra Hair Tutorial part 5: Brush and Push tools, Dynamic Draping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IndFuzP4_IM

Carrara Hair Tutorial part 6: Cut and Length and Straighten tools, Auto Grouping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzYjkgkA_fM

Hair Tutorial part 7, Hair simulation and animation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd3AI71JGh4