I’m trying to come up with a decent feather texture for a bird I’m trying to do. I’m so far liking a mixture of Sas for the main body feathers and real mapped geometry for the flight feathers. Only problem I’m having is matching the specularity of the textures to the SAS so they blend in properly.
Perhaps I’m approaching this wrong and there is a better way to do this, but if anyone has some suggestions it would be appreciated!
hi steve
i think the best solution for this is model the feather, UV map and then clone for the geometry.
YOu can then use Transluncy , transparancy and clip maps for the polys and colour and spec and diffuse for the texture… i would not use sas or anything really…
do a search in all threads…an you will see some good examples, maybe different software
but the technique is the same.
cheers
n
Thanks Neil.
So I would need to model a range of feathers and then distribute across the body of the bird in the most appropiate place.
I did do some searches but the only thread I came across that held promise has had all the images removed as it was quite old. Its would have been useful to see how the maps had been painted to get the right sheen feathers have.
I’ll continue my search for examples of your suggested technique…
Cheers!
Hey Steve,
Have you looked at 9.5 beta? There could be a feather solution for you in LW’s new hair and fur. Not too sure how much I can say without breaking the beta NDA, but I think that the news about the new hair and fur is publicly available.
I’m also looking for a good feather solution, so if I come up with anything I’ll let you know.
Im a bit busy right now, so cant get into 9.5 yet, but Im pretty excited about the possibilities.
Hey Mike
I think the tools offered in 9.5 will undoubtly provide a much better hair/fur and possibly feathering experience, but they are not robust enough yet for production. (Any beta product should be used with caution in production imho!)
I’ve actually come up with a hybrid way of doing this by painting maps and then using a bit of SAS fur to give an illusion of feathers. When its lit properly and motion blurred, it works pretty well.
Sadly I cant post my results or anything due to an NDA though.
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