Controlling hair?

Is there a way to control hair particles for animation besides hair dynamics? Like, along the lines of how an armature can control a mesh?

I’m having real issues with hair dynamics not working very well - cant use collisions because it’s just unbearably slow, and often the hair just wont move/sit how I want anyway. So i’m really hoping there’s some other way, preferably non-simulated. I’ve also tried converting to mesh, but I can’t get the hair to look the same - and it’s also unbearably slow :frowning:

Wanting the same, anyone have any clue if this can be done?

Hair particles are sensitive to forced field. So in theory, you could use a curve guide by lock.
In practice, it kills edition made in particle edit mode and the only way to add randomness this way is to do all the shaping with children.
And it requires a curve guide object and a particle system per lock.

Another choïce is to use a lattice. Problem is that lattice will need a high number of vertices to be pertinent.
It would not be pertinent for long hair (unless you mulitply number of lattices and particle systems) and will deform the emitter mesh, too. So often, it means a secondary hidden scalp mesh (many if you use many particle systems).

You can also create an UV textured basemesh for a lock. Texture would look like hair. It can be created from baking.
Then, you can use a particle instance modifier on this basemesh. So, you can obtain a huge mesh that correspond to an hair style created from particles.
Eventually, after applying modifier, you use an armature rig made of bone chains on that mesh.

You also can completely avoid particles and use sculpt or freehand curve drawing tool to create hair locks.
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.78/Modelling#Curve_Editing

Cycles Hair shader can be used on meshes. So, if a mesh does not look like hair, it is probably more related to the way it is textured more than a dead end.

Worked around this by just Converting the Hair to a mesh and Manually doubling for thickness. From there I can animate it any way I want however I lose the physics of it. It’s a trade off that I’ll take for control.