The is another way in max. If you planar map your model and put a gradient map in the diffuse. You can use render to texture and bake out the diffuse to your model. Nice part about that is you can control as many points and colors to the gradient as you want.
Thanks for posting your beard stuff Kapoff. I took a break from making endless beards and made the diffuse maps and then went back to it :P Heres the diffuse maps flat shaded: @PyrZern: make one smoothing group for the whole thing OR delete one half and bake, then mirror it.