check out the tutorials on marmosets website. Look up character artist tutorials. There is a couple that will show you good setup for textures. In particular make sure you understand why they use anisotropic reflections. You don't have to use marmoset of course, but they do good job of explaining very clearly what…
I don't mean to be under-appreciative and I welcome the different methods that you are proposing.( btw xgen looks sick), It's just that my question was about something pretty specific which you don't exactly find at face value on tutorials. I'm not using splines for the hair on purpose and I have a hard time finding out…