Well, I’ve all of a suddan gotten this drive to create a photoreal bird of some sort (i’m thinking maybe a seagull) and of course that’ll require photoreal feathers. So, I decide to start trying to make some. However, if anyone would like to input their own feathers, feather tests, go right ahead and do so.
first try.
better than the ugly stuff i have… 
This thread just motivated me to try and make a feather. I’ll post my progress. 
A little improvement. BTW, does anyone know how to join wo meshes that have custom particle systems, yet still the same, without losing one of the particle systems. I’m having trouble with that.
and the blend if anyone wants to take a look.
Feather.blend (721 KB)
You can attach the same particle system to more than one object, although I don’t know whether it keeps all the settings.
Okay, so I transferred the particles to a texture on a plane. Not quite as good looking, but oh well. The one problem that I find (when alligning them in rows, that is) is that it’s impossible to angle them right without them going through eachother. A modifier that bent meshes to keep that from happening would be awesome. If anyone knows of an already existing way to do this, that would be awesome too. Anyway, I’m playing around with the normal maps and tangents right now. Did a mockup using the cgc dupliface method. Downey feather shader’s are a pain in the butt.
Do you mean you abandoned particles and you are using textures on a plane instead for the feather?
Ummm… Yeah. I’m trying to use the particle image as a normal map so I can still have that POP. But it’s not wanting to work with tangent shading.
