That is looking epic man!
Enjoying all the updates, looking forward to the final!
Keep on rocking
thanks guys! 
thorst - thanks for the suggestion! That was something that caught my eye as well. I made an effort to soften up the red feathers in the last render, but I suppose I should try to push that further
But for now, here’s one last update for the weekend. I finished up the diffuse/alpha textures for the tail feathers:
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It’s looking beautiful!
Wow… amazing! Can’t wait to see the end result. :eek:
Very nice 
Nice work and usefull tutorial!
Why do you use both bump node and displacement output on the material?
Both can’t work together.
Wehnever you use the displacement output of a material normals and bump node won’t affect any of the used input.
You solved the displacement mystery for me. Thanks!
This is a great project, fun to follow along.
Really! I had no idea
I was using the bump node just because I assumed it was the correct thing to do. Thanks for the heads up about this 
Great looking bird. Now make it fly 
ooh, that’s really good to know! thanks for posting that 
And as long as i’m posting, here’s a small update for tonight. I remade the eye so now it’s not just a sphere with a low res texture:
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I love ara macao and Blender. Good feathers.
stunning work! :yes:
putting the “bioluminescent” in bioluminescent macaw 
critiques welcome
Full res image here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17578055/Bird/Bird_057.jpg
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Beautiful work.
I cannot come up with a real critique. I see some a aliasing due to the feather’s alpha but I think that can be solved with by throwing more samples at them.
Hi, I think the work is really amazing. I am following it since you started posting.
For the final lighting, I think it could look interesting if like the bird is sitting in a tree, sun shining on top. I attached a proposal
Cheers!
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Thanks guys
ToshiCG - yea, I’ve definitely got some moire patterns going on, but I think those will go away when I render at a higher resolution…then it’s just a matter of picking the right down scaling algorithm
Centauri - thanks for the paintover! I always appreciate those. The original plan was to have a kind of dark and stormy overcast to help make the glow pop out more, but after seeing what it’d look like with broken up light patterns, I might try that instead! Direct sunlight will definitely help make it look more vibrant
here are a couple test renders I thought I’d post
I redid the fiber optic shader to be roughly based on blenderguru’s tutorial:
Fiber optic lamps are pretty cheap, so I bought one and put a strand under my usb microscope for fun/reference
I also started experimenting with The Grove tree generator plugin and a few HDRIs from hdrihaven
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wowwww, very good work, your work is a real source of inspiration. Congratulations Could you consider doing a tutorial on how you made such realistic feathers? it will help many of us, especially me.
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