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Simon Edwards replies
Creating realistic portraiture will more than likely include simulated hair, but there may also be many other situations when a hair modifier is useful in a scene. Not only for dressing a human head, but also for clothing items, fabrics, animal hair, carpets and grassy surfaces to name but a few.
3ds Max comes with a very intuitive tool for creating realistic and styled hair and fur. This modifier is found under the World Space Modifiers drop-down list. V-ray also has a (less flexible) hair creation tool found under Geometry and Vray: Vrayfur.
The 3ds Max Hair and Fur modifier enables you to comb, style and trim hair strands on screen and interactively, as if using a comb and scissors. This is fantastic for creating detailed, brushed hair styles and it can be additionally deformed by adding external simulated forces like wind.
Styling with Vrayfur is tricky and less intuitive however, as it requires tweaking the variables in linked procedural maps in the material editor. For this reason Vrayfur is best used as a tool for creating random furry objects such as deep pile carpet or even grassy areas, as it doesn’t lend itself easily to such close control.
V-ray also supplies a very nice material specifically for use with hair and fur objects. I find this to be a superior material to the default option offered in the 3ds Max Hair and Fur modifier. To get the best out of both worlds and by selecting one or two additional parameters, it is of course possible to use the V-ray material together with the 3ds Max Hair and Fur modifier.