Animating hair (fibers actually) manually

[davision]

I have to animate a object that is ripping apart and it is made of fibrous strands. I'm thinking of using max hair (or a hair plugin) to create the fibers, but I want to know if anyone has experience manually animating hair. I know max hair can do dynamics but I need to have control over the way the fibers bend as the object rips, so I think I need full manual control.

Can anyone tell me if this is possible with max hair or Hairfarm or Ornatrix? (I've never used the latter two).