For my female warrior characrter everyone has been asking me how I was going to do the hair, me unsure always brushing this off but not having a definitive plan i thought I'd work it out when I came to it with a combination of sculpting in zBrush and targa images. However I came across a hair script plug in GMH2 for Maya, the showreel made the plug in look really easy to use with amazing results. The aspect that attracted me to this plug in first was that it was very similar to the targa method of using transparent planes with images of hair, however this wasnt very high quality. The script take a surface such as a plane or tube and tells the hair to follow it.
Having only got the script yesterday I have already gained a good understanding of the controls available. There are many factors or attributes that can be changed to change the style of the hair. Here is a render of the results I am currently getting, I am really happy with this so far as it is already much closer to the original design.