Unified mesh system for hair (and maybe other things) to reduce the “separate strands” look

Hey everyone, I’ve been thinking a lot about how hair often looks in animation, especially when there’s strong light (like sunset) or when the camera is a bit farther away. A lot of the time the individual strands become really noticeable and it starts looking like a bunch of separate objects instead of one coherent volume of fur/hair. It can feel a bit artificial or “painful” to look at. I’m a beginner so I don’t know all the technical side, but I was wondering if something like a unified mesh approach could help. The basic idea:

Instead of treating every strand as its own editable object (which also lags a lot in edit mode), keep the whole thing as one single mesh. You could still control density and pattern across it (like how tightly packed the hair is in different areas). Have a brush tool that lets you comb or shape regions of the hair by dragging, and make the brush smaller when you want more precise control. Different parts of the mesh could have different behaviour — for example front hair moves more than the back, or some areas are curlier than others — while still staying connected as one object. Also the ability to slightly reduce density when the hair is under strong light or when the camera is farther away, so the individual strands don’t stick out as much. Just small changes so it never disappears.

I feel like this could help hair feel more like a soft, continuous volume (closer to the nicer fur we see in something like Toy Story 4) while still giving artists control. Has anyone else run into this “strands look too separate” problem a lot?

Are there already good ways to get closer to this kind of unified look with current Geometry Nodes or hair tools that I’m missing?

Would a dedicated brush + single-mesh workflow actually be useful, or does it create new problems I’m not seeing? Curious what more experienced people think