How to get Particle Hair Children to follow parent through a ring to make a Ponytail

My idea was to make a ring, I used a Torus, then added a Force Field to it, but it did not work, the Children do not even follow the parent.

To use Particle hair or not, that is the question, it seems I should just use another method, the question is which one?

I do a video series called Light Wizzard in the Flesh, not a plug, but you can watch the 3 minute trailer at Yew Tube Channel TheLightWizzard, to get an idea what I am trying to do, this was orginally done in 2.4x, then moved it to 2.5x, and it broke at 2.66, and will not work in 2.67, so I need to start over, I want to use Cycles for the New scene, I have no idea why, but it seems that is the direction blender is going, and I want to stay with what works the best for what I am doing, but doing a Crystal Ball in Cycles may be harder then I imagined, or easier, but its a learning curve, and I am not all that happy with the Crystal Ball now.

My question is simple, can I use the Particle System to create a Ponytail?

I take my hair and put it in a Ponytail with my Beard, as you can see in the video, and I want my character to have the same look, my problem is how to get the children to follow the parent through the ring, not sure if it can be done, any help would be great.

Thanks, Flesh

Edit: I did not find a way to make the hair follow a path, so I went with a Mesh Hair up to the Ponytail, then particle hair after it.

I think you will want 2 particle systems. One to go from the face to the ring and another to go from the ring down further.

I have not tried this but I remember watching a video training that used this approach with a ponytail.

I tried it, the problem I had was that the children never followed the hair into the ring, let alone through it, so I never made it to the second one.

Thanks for confirming the idea was good, maybe I am doing it wrong, should the children follow the parent hair?

Because it seems that is the problem I am having, its not following, in fact its all over the place, the only other thing I could do is not use children, which would be crazy, I would have to add every hair individually, but that might be my only chose, I just want to make sure its my only chose before getting that crazy, it would take a long time to add hair that way, I think I would use another method instead.

It is probably good to use the free HairNet addon to initially place the hair where you want. Once you have the hair in place, use the weight paint tool to fix the hair around the ring so that they don’t move.
If the children are causing problems, make sure they are simple not interpolated, and reduce the radius. Using more guide hair can also be helpful but will take more processor power to compute.

To be honest though, looking at the video I would not bother with particle hair. A properly textured polygon would be more than enough.

Thanks, good advice.