I based my feather design on Angry Birds movie though the feathering uses a short - long - short approach to clumping rather than bending the outer hairs like Blender. I also adjusted the build to give flat clumping using the “Roundness” property which I’m almost certain is a bug in Blender. The variable in the build names it “flat” which seems appropriate now that I’ve adjusted it.
I’m yet to try larger feather’s on the chest leading from the neck with smaller feathers like AB.
I think I will try adjusting the beak and feet colouring. Create a monochromatic palette using the browns - oranges - yellow. The white beak and white feet (although accurate to the more-pork) has too great a contrast and almost looks “punched-out”.
but how were the feathers made
is it simple hair particles using group as object ?
beginning to look good
but need some better material to look more natural
sometimes times there is sort of a pattern or other color on some part of the bird!
but how were the feathers made
is it simple hair particles using group as object ?
Using path rendering and clumping to achieve the effect. I’m not bringing anything new to the game
Initially I thought I would have to use Children > Simple so i adjusted the build source to make “Rounded” hair flat like a feather. The better result was using Interpolated as clumping is affected by parent strands. Each feather is a parent. Quickest method was to x-mirror and place a few parent hair and comb these, then de-select x-mirror and add hair with interpolation. Placing hair in rows and overlapping them like brick tiling. With Children > Interpolated pulls adjacent hair and with the proper placement you get a flattened feather like effect. Weight painting for density greatest at the chest and fewer around the eyes gives the best result.
but need some better material to look more natural
The design I’m going for is cartoonish but agree that the feather’s need more work. I want to get a softer feather design like Angry Birds.
Below are some other development examples that got the chop.
here is a real photo of a great owl I took this spring
That pattern is epic!
I’m attempting to do this with hair now. Hair picks texture colour from the root position - so simply applying an owl texture won’t do as in my case the darker patches are overwhelming the render.
I’ve tried moving the root to the lighter areas of texture but this hasn’t worked.
I will try to re-do the texture to overwhelm it with lighter areas OR apply two hair layers one dark and the other light.
Think I will look at the Dynamic Sky add-on to try and get some lighting values that are more consistent to speed up prototyping.
Would really loved to have made the glasses magnify but glass threw too much shadow. A number of techniques failed including using a transparent shader mixed with glass with a Is Shadow Ray (boolean operation is why I guess they named it liked that) factor.
The feathers are still a bit meh - might try some post rendering to see if I can get a softer look.
