Here is a freebie for you.
I tried to give it a go for the new 2.0 hair functionality. I created the model in Max with Ornatrix.
I have no idea how to post to live DB so I attached the orbx file to this post.
I know the model and the render is a bit lame. But it's just to show you how it works.
With this material you can change the hair root and tip colors driven with a gradient.
( Here its root color is Brown and the tip is Violet)
Also you can add a mortar hair color (Here it's white) and change it's density.
In this image the hair colors comes from octane's gradient.
It's driven by a basic black&white gradient texture.
Also the mortar color density is driven by another texture for noise.. the Speckle.jpg
To change the mortar hair density, change the gamma of the image in mixtexture amount node. You can also play with the speckle.jpg's scale. Right now it's set at a smaller size.
To change the bias of the root - tip color fade change the gamma of the image in Gradient node.
To change the color of the Root-Tip colors of course change the colors in the gradient.
Hope it gives basic idea how to color your hair
I mainly use Max plugin and I'm not that good at standalone so I used textures to drive the colors.
If you can do the similar result without textures please step in, be my guest and share the knowledge.
Cheers,
Oguz