You might not be able to crank one modifier up to 30,000 but max handles that number fairly well if you spread it across several modifiers. You can then bake that into a helmet if you wish. Personally for the image you posted, I would sculpt it in ZBrush or MudBox. I don't know a single artist that would try and do that…
Seforin, awesome! Miguelito, I don't understand the 5cm restriction could you explain? I've used it to make long haired characters and it works really well. Of course you still run into the pain of animating long hair... It will make hair as long and as complex as the spline. I showed the most basic approach (short poly…
An anisotropic shader can help with the specular. Or really fine normals, but that's prone to flicker. Great tutorial! For things like animals I do the hair-styling on the uv's transferred to the mesh via channelinfo and render it from the top.
Nice work. As far as tutorials go, it could use a few more images to describe the actions. Its fine for most experienced folks, but a few more images might go a long way with the beginners out there. Also, some end-result images wouldn't hurt
My tutorial writing skills are no where near where they should be. Re-reading it I think I can make it much clearer. I'll take another stab at it. 1) Plot your hair guides using splines. Align your splines so they will form poly strips. For the purpose of this example it will look as simple as 3. 2) Select the first spline…