Okay, this could take a while to explain; I’ll try to keep it simple.
For my final project in an acting class, I’m making a short film - a mix between Frank Peretti and Alfred Hitchcock. The idea is that the main character walks into a forest, underneath two trees that have half-fallen and are leaning on each other, forming a kind of gate. When he walks underneath, he essentially enters something like a different dimension. Branches start reaching out at him, scratching him, a shadowy figure starts to follow him… Anyway, at one point he comes across a cemetery with a marble pillar in the middle. On the pillar is a marble crow. He walks up to look at it, hears a cry behind him and turns around. When he turns back to the pillar, the marble crow is gone. Slightly freaked out, he turns again, only to see a real crow landing on a branch less than a foot away from his face.
I’ll definitely post a link to the finished movie here (sometime in January ), but for now, here’s the crow. It’s supposed to end up looking slightly surreal - ever see an animal that looked like it could see into your soul? And it has to be slightly evil as well, of course.
So far, I’ve done some rough modeling based on reference pictures. I plan on starting work on feathers sometime next week… Any comments, hints, critiques would be appreciated.
Right now it looks subsurfaced–like, a bit TOO smooth. That and you’ll have to get rid of all those triangles and weird angles. Quads are a more efficient and more easily animated way of going about it.
Still though, the anatomy and proportions seem pretty good, not any complaints there, though I’m not an expert. One thing I notice is I don’t know if its tail is actually that long without the feathers.
Yeah, you’re right about the tail - the feathers should make up more of it. As far as subsurfacing, I just set it really high for the render, not for any particular reason. I’m counting on the feathers taking care of most of the detail… I hope. Then again, the face will need quite a few bumps and other things to give it character.
Any ideas on how to do feathers efficiently? Could I use the new ‘strands’ (‘hair’?) feature for that? Or would I be better off trying to use child objects? (Tutorials, anyone? )
Work on your edgeloops, especially because you’re wanting to animate it later. I’m too lazy to post a tutorial-link right now, sorry
As for the feathers, you could try duplicating the model and make it denser, then DupliVerting the feathers on (the feathers could eventually be simple planes with an alpha texture).
Really nice idea for a short though! I hope you’ll make it (I have a bad habit of quitting projects after a week or so:P)!
The unsubsurfed “stone crow” looks really good. The subsurfed version looks more like a seagull. Maybe you should just leave the crow set solid, unsubsurfed. Seeing a stone crow flying around is a lot freakier than seeing a stone crow turn into a real crow.
The sound effects for stone wings might be hard to pull off, though…
Anyway, here’s a current update (it doesn’t really deserve that - it looks hideous - but anyway). I finally managed to edit a single feather in the Gimp (don’t ask…) and import it into Blender with an alpha channel. This is just turning DupliVerts on.
As you can see, I could really use a tutorial on orienting ‘card hair’ correctly… And then get a generic feather material for everything but the wings, which will use the dupliverted feather (with more vertices, etc.). I saw that someone posted a materials library with a really nice feather texture, but the link is broken.
You could, but it’d mainly look like crap. Maybe for the small, small feathers on the neck and face, but around the legs and on the tail and wings you’d need proper feathers.
Density matters.
If you are using dupliverts, on your ‘duplicate object’ get rid of the vertices at the feet (feet don’t have feathers) and increase the number of vertices around the body.
Particles work somewhat the same way. You can control how many particles come out of an area and how they are distributed across the area, but the area is defined by the underlying mesh (the duplicate object).
Birds have differently sized feathers.
I would use about three sizes of feather. Use the smallest feathers for the body. When using particles, you can start out with a low particle count to arrange the feathers, then increase it before render.
Medium sized feathers for things you don’t want to tweak too much by hand, like the secondary feathers along the back of the wing and the tail feathers, and a few primary feathers.
Largest feathers to the primary feathers that angle noticeably when the wing moves. These you will likely want to rig in place instead of using particles/dupliverts.
Some delicate spots (like near the eyes and along the joints at the pelvis) don’t really need feathers. Just an appropriate bump.
re: Particles. No, it isn’t necessarily defined by the underlying mesh, turn on ‘random’ and ‘even’ to make the density even, then control the density with a painted vertex group.
My difficulty at this point is emitting particle-based mini-feathers (just using color gradient strands) in certain areas (body), then emitting dupliverted feathers on the wings, and finally having plain old materials for the feet, beak, etc.
I’ll probably have to create several different mesh sections for each type of ‘feathering’.
Okay, here’s an update. Rereading some of the comments, and tweaking the materials settings - a lot - I got the following render. The body uses strands for ‘mini’ feathers. The look I have right now is probably good enough for my purposes as far as the body goes.
The beak and feet will need a bit of work with materials yet - texturing bump and color maps. I’m going to follow Duoas’s suggestion and hand-model & rig the feathers on the wing.
Anywho, here’s the render. (Thumbnail - click to enlarge)
I would make the feathers a little bigger(using halos for materials) and give them more specular highlights. Right now from a short distance he just looks solid black
Er, don’t individually rig them all --you’ll go insane. This image is hotlinked on the internet. If you don’t see it, click here.
All the feathers in red you should be able to apply with dupliverts (separate for each wing, so you can adjust them together for each wing separately). Where it says “leave few feathers” (these are primary feathers) is where you’ll want to spend your time rigging individual feathers. The area labeled “cut feathers” you can divide in half then individually rig the left half and include the right half with the dupliverted section.
Duoas - thanks a lot. Creating & rigging the feathers is what I’m starting on now, so that comes in handy - great reference picture!
Here’s an updated materials render. Any feedback on the model or materials would be appreciated. Again - the wings, tail and eyes are being started tomorrow.
), but for now, here’s the crow. It’s supposed to end up looking slightly surreal - ever see an animal that looked like it could see into your soul? And it has to be slightly evil as well, of course. 
