I agree that the hair approach has a bit of a different workflow and presents its own set of problems that require some workarounds, however the benefit in render times, ram usage as well as control over the end product is imho superior (especially if animated or interacted with in some way)
They can’t be properly texture painted
This is one i cant really solve as hairs, even in cycles, cant be uv mapped. However its easy enough to create a shader that mimics real feather strands with a random variation, which gives it a more accurate result in the render.
However, yes, in the overall design, of the bird, getting the colors right would be challenging. I guess you would have to create multiple feather groups and particle systems on the bird itself to layer the feathers, but i think you would need to do that anyways if you are going to use particle systems for your high poly feathers.
Spacing between the emitted hairs isn’t consistent like it is on real feathers
Easily solved with vertex/weight maps/paint
The comb tool is really finicky and makes it easy for strands to overlap eachother
While this is a problem, i see it as a feature because on real feathers the single strands often clump, split and stick together forming larger gaps that creates variety.
Sorry i just have a penchant for generative approaches in design.
yup! a lot of the feathers were duplicated in groups of 3-5 followed by a few quick location/rotation tweaks though, so it didn’t take quite as long as you’d think
Hm. I must have missed how to do this when I was trying it out. Might have to look back into particle systems if my current approach doesn’t work out
Anyway - I finished the first pass of texturing! Going to try and add the striations to the textures next.
The main trick here was to mix the Diffuse + Specular first, then mix that with the translucency shader for some light to pass through, and finally mix that with the transparent node.
thanks speed7,
I definitely agree with you - more screen space for the bird would be better. It’s been surprisingly hard to get the right size and aspect ratio though. Probably has to do with how super-long the tail is… No matter how i position it, the bird always seems to be too small or too big.
I think I’ll scale it up a little bit more, but I still want to have some vertical breathing room. Don’t want the subject matter to be right up against the border edges, and definitely don’t want it to be cropped.
This is some really promising work so far and also a nice concept.
As far as your feather-tests go, my question would be this: Have you tried using a particle instance modifier with your fully modeled out highpoly-feathers?
Itd be an option somwhere inbetween a hairstrand-based approach as was already suggested and your original all-geometry-approach (if I didnt missunderstand the latter).
In any case it makes the feathers (real) instances, thus saves memory compared to the all-geo-solution. It also might just give you enough control and a way of solving your UVs-problem (you had with the strands-option).
If Im not misstaken, the particle instance modifier must have been how they did the meadow for Cosmos Laundromat either. If so, this should give an idea of the possibilities. In short, I fealt you might wanna try/test it, in case you havent already. Anyway good luck!
kologe - I remember trying out particle instancing when I first started experimenting with the feathers, but ultimately the geometry strands being baked to a texture was a better solution
xp8110 - it would be awesome to see this bird fly! but rigging and animating it is beyond the scope of this project, and it’d probably take forever considering how long this has taken so far
Anyway, I finished the secondary and primary feathers today! Now all that’s left are the tail feathers. Woo!
I think, if you are going for realism, the feathers around the back of the head, the throat and the leading edge of the wing (in the red region) should be a bit more plain to each other. Looking at real photos, I am not able to distinguish the single feathers in that region, it’s more like a soft, hairlike surface there. Only some single feathers stand out of this surface, which makes it very interesting to look at.
because on real feathers the single strands often clump, split and stick together forming larger gaps that creates variety.
But what is your alpha texture and how did you make it?
