Hey Si

yeah hair is an absolute chicken mutha!

I try keep it as simple as possible.But there'll be a time when I'll have to bite the bullet. As I dont have Shave yet so I have to settle for the poly cap method for now with trans maps, though you could try and up the res and sculpt it on the head itself. If you can buy Z brush, do, it saved me a load of time painting the texture without seam issues. Again you could do it in that and render out the dis map after in MR.

The same for the beard.

TBH This looks pretty good to do at a glance, as long as you get those uvs spot on you wont havea problem. Also if you go down the fur route use a cap with good uvs, I dont think many people are aware of the uv factor for fur, it makes a big difference.

I recently did my first proper production hair using the fur module in maya. It was a flat top hair-do but I was still pleased with it. But again I still made a cap for easy editing and parented it to the rig in the neck. Also prior to that, I used paintfx with curves, again I was pleased with the result, but that was alot of set up time, more than fur. I nearly did that method for the girl, but I was thinking of render times, I have so much laying ahead of me for Outlaws I have to keep things down to a minimum so I can get it done.

Hope some of this helps
Jay