Animated hair or static hair? Which is preferable?

[Sloofish]

If it's for example, anime style hair and looks more 'plastic' would you prefer it be static or weighted and move with the model?

I'm currently working on some of these 'solid' style cartoon hairstyles and I'm really wondering if it would be a better idea to weight them or let them stay solid. Is there a standard for solid mesh hair animation, or is it a better idea to just leave it solid?

What do you prefer for hair?

(The hair WIP in question)

[Wulfie Reanimator]

I think it mainly depends on the length of the hair.

For something that short, I think you can leave it "solid" (unrigged, or only rigged to the skull).

For longer hair that goes past the neck, you may want to have it rigged to the head and chest/spine or other appropriate bones. For example:

If the above hair was unrigged, the bangs on the front would stab into my chest whenever my head leans forward.
Instead of that, we get this: (I assume this is what you meant by "animated" and not actual animations for the hair.)

[Tazzie Tuque]

When I started second life over 13 years ago, we had no choice for hair other than solid.. and as a result most hair looked like some sort of helmet rather than hair but we all were stuck with it.  Then we got flexi prims which totally changed hair fashion, some of the old flexi hair was not so great but some evolved into very nice flowing locks which a lot of people still prefer today over mesh.  Then we got mesh, which in the beginning was not much better than the old solid hair..  Slowly mesh hair improved to give the appearance of real hair that moved with the body but did not flow like flexi ( drawback with this was it flowed into the body lol)  and some creators combine the two, mesh with flexi and get a very nice result..  But to answer your question.. static could just take us back to the helmet like old prim hair.. Personally I would prefer to see it weighted.  

[Alyona Su]

What is preferable is an answer only you can decide.

Personally: I like mesh with elements of prim-flexy. I also like all-flexy hair, provided the style works for it (I don't want long strands hanging through the middle of my shoulders, for example). A static mesh is "okay," generally-speaking, but often looks "plastic" to me. So does all prim hair with no flexy. Though a quality texturing, including "materials" can fix those shortcomings.

Only my own perspectives and useless opinions, of course.