Hair and Fur vs. HAIR FARM

Modeling	Hair and Fur	HAIR FARM
Hair Mesh modeling (more info)	No	Yes (more info)
Hair modeling with brushes	Yes, various brush options	Yes, for short hair and fur only
Hair generation from splines	Yes, interpolating two splines at a time (can produce unexpected results) or by recombing (prone to produce self intersections)	Yes, individual for each spline or by interpolating all splines together
Strand thickness	Specified at root and tip only	Can take any shape from root to tip
Hair styling	Frizz, Kink, and Multi-Strand with a few parameters	Frizz, Kink, Spiral, Curves, Cluster, Wisps, and more with many parameters that can be applied multiple times in any order to any percentage of hair strands
Units	Internal units	3ds Max units
Materials	Hair and Fur	HAIR FARM
Simple hair material	Yes, limited settings	Yes, as an actual material (more info)
Realistic hair material	No	Yes, as an actual material (more info)
Strand color	Specified at root and tip only	Can be specified anywhere from root to tip with any map
Shading polygons as hair	No	Yes
Animation	Hair and Fur	HAIR FARM
Dynamics parameters	A few	Many
Gravity compensation (for preserving modeled hair shape)	No	Yes (more info)
Hair-Hair interactions	No	Yes
Adjustable simulation speed	No	Yes
Friction parameter	No	Yes
Key frame hair animation support	Only for hair parameters and via animating splines used for creating hairs	Supports animating the hair model with morphs, bones, and many others methods available in 3ds Max, along with animating hair parameters
External simulation support	Yes, by animating splines used for creating hairs with any simulation tool that can be applied to splines	Yes, by animating the hair mesh with any simulation tool that can be applied to splines and/or poly objects
Lights and Shadows	Hair and Fur	HAIR FARM
Directional Lights	Treated as spot lights for hair shadows	Yes
Shadow map for hair	Yes, very limited settings	Yes
Ray traced hair shadows	No	Yes
Shadows from omni lights	Yes, but buggy in 3ds Max 2010 (sometimes works)	Yes
Skylight support	Yes, without shadows	Yes
Can use any object shadow type	Yes	Yes
Can use different shadow types on hair	No	Yes
Rendering	Hair and Fur	HAIR FARM
Rendering Speed	Too slow (more info)	Lightning Fast! (more info)
Hair Rendering Method	Line segments	Curves and ray tracing
Multi-Core computing for modern CPUs	Only for some tasks in 3ds Max 2009 and above	Yes
Compositing	After scene rendering (can produce artifacts)	During scene rendering (no artifacts)
Ray Traced Reflections/Refractions	Yes	Yes
Ray traced Hair Rendering (useful for fish eye cameras)	No	Yes
Motion-blur	Not working	Yes
Antialiasing	Oversampling (Slow and requires parameter adjustment)	Automatic (Fast and always high quality)
Transparency	Fake with multiple passes and SLOW	Fast and correct transparency from material
Mental ray support	Hair primitives and post compositing buffer	Hair primitives only
Plugin renderer support	Yes	Yes
Depth of Field	No	Hair Farm's high quality DOF
Render Elements	Hair-only, no settings	Alpha, Hair, Shadow, Velocity, and Z Depth
Export	Hair and Fur	HAIR FARM
Hair strands to poly object	Yes, with no adjustable settings	Yes, with various settings
Hair strands to splines	Yes, with no adjustable settings	Yes, with various settings
Animating hairs to poly object	No	Yes, with various settings
Animating hairs to splines	No	Yes, with various settings

* We are devoted to keep this comparison 100% accurate. If you notice anything that is not accurate or that is debatable, please contact us at info@hair-farm.com and help us keep this comparison accurate.