thanks Jeordanis, I have seen those videos, they do not mention anything about caching, loading or exporting. So do I bake massfx dynamics on the dynamic hair objects in the simulation file, export the hair object as an alembic and then apply a strand Animation modifier in the render file and load the alembic into that?

I figured it was something like that but yeah, couldn't find anything to specifically say 'this is how you do it'. Is it normal to take about ten minutes to bake out simulation on 200 guides? Man this is sloooow!

with the utmost respect - those videos do not represent production assets.

I have 200 guides with detail set to 3 segments on a point cached mesh, I baked out a 100 frame sequence, it took ten to fifteen minutes. There is no real time anything with massFX - unless you are using a sphere with uniform length guides.

I'll pretend you didn't post that cloth sim video, i can't think of a single asset I've groomed in the last five years that could use that workflow.

I get that they are representational for learning but I'm asking for a way to speed things up because when you have a whole character to simulate it's a painfully slow process. The long hair example is really the only method that applies to the assets I work with - although you have to factor in a deforming mesh just to slow it down a little more. After waiting for it to run through 100 frames and finding stray guides flying around or getting stuck in weird shapes there is nothing you can do except run the sim again and again, it's a time vortex. I also find that grooms contain hairs of multiple lengths so the settings that work for simulating longer hair doesn't work for short hair so you have to paint maps to mask out areas.

I would love to see an example of the cloth sim method working on a full groom. The problem i have with that method is that you need to be able to sim without modifying your 'look' and getting the groom into a position that looks right but also allows cloth not to be intersecting is near impossible.

thanks for the suggestions nottoshabi but cloth is totally impractical for the very reason you mention - collision. The groom was for a wolf, long fur all over the body interspersed with shorter fur, there is no practical way to convert the groom to cloth strips without days of tweaking to get an intital state that doesn't immediately explode or constantly flicker and jiggle. The motion needed to be very subtle, just enough to gauge movement but not be completely obvious - which is always the most difficult type of sim.

I ended up making edit guide mods that could be animated on and off for up/down/left/right.

The wolf and fur transition shots were done with Ornatrix.

https://vimeo.com/211225494