An alternative on the previous experiment. This nHair tail consists entirely of dynamic follicles. That is, these are affected by dynamics like gravity and collision. However, I disabled collisions with the body and itself because some of the fibers were caught in the body and freaking out. Really, a combination of dynamic and passive follicles (with collisions and fur that isn't trapped) would look best, but these tests were time-consuming. At the very least, I wanted to see if completely passive would look alright.

Render time was 10 hr 30 min. Again, I rendered this with Global Illumination, Caustics, and Ambient Occlusion set and I really wish I had remembered to disable caustics and tell it to reuse the photon map. Still, it's not nearly as slow as you might think it'd be.



EDIT: Wait! Wait, wait. It was 10 hours because I rendered 300 frames instead of 150 to give the nHair a chance to settle in the swing of its dynamics. Silly me! It took twice as long because I rendered twice as much!

A smarter way would be to run the simulation manually up to 150 frames (much faster) and then set that as the start position. Then, you basically start at that position on frame 1. But, I was rushing at it was faster to let it render all day long while I was away than to do that.