Feather Challenge

[Medicinehorse7]

Hello all,

After having seen the Lord of the Rings Eagles I began trying to replicate the feathers (any) feathers and wow is it tough for me. I have been using several programs to create a complete Tail feather set of bird feathers, yet am not satisfied with a believable feather.

I have been collecting feather textures for 6 years now (multiple species) and have perhaps one of the greatest texture libraries around.

Here is the challenge create the full tail of a bird. Tail feathers (6 each side) shouls be separate from the other, detailing the quill, fletch and texture the sculpts to the proper species.

Texture them and post the ZTLs, OBJs for all to share and to the winner goes my 6 year feather texture collection (1.2 Gigs worth)

Base meshes can be shared (encouraged) and please pay attention to the profile as well as the left and right side curves with coresponding textuire shifts. Please do not split the fletch as this tends to look Trashy or shabby a split here and there is acceptable -- most birds are well groomed.

The Post will run for at least 1 month and who knows maybe a lot longer. I would love for all of us to have a mini feather library. Good luck and I am eager to see you pull this one off! :tu:

Here are a few examples of tail feathers.

aaasingle.jpg RT_tail_immature.jpg tail_RT.jpg 11_MixedFan-Frt.jpg FTHRs_6shamrock.jpg FTHRs_Buffons.jpg kestrel_9.jpg wingwitt%20104%20Oriole%20feather%20on%20black%20&%20white.jpgflipped.jpg arapahoe.jpg esparrowhawk-t.jpg
f4_3.jpg banksian%20cokatoo.jpg

[Eonsuu]

Wow that´s one impressive collection of feathers you have! :eek: The first price in your challenge is a fine price for sure. I have no idea how to make bird feathers but I´ll give it a try :D Good way to learn more of zbrush.

[Medicinehorse7]

Eonsuu,

I tried some last night and had a good start with a thin cylinder layed sideways
I then used a sliver thin mask to define the fletch, Inverted the mask and transposed the section. That only gave me one side however, I suppose I could do the other side today. Good luck

[spaceboy412]

do these need to be able to be used in other programs or stay native to zbrush?

[joep]

Hello,

i had myself a try and it came out more cartoonish and editable.
Verry busy with school at the moment so hopefully i can give it another try/aproach soon.

PS: Medicinehorse7 the images are so inspiring ty.

Joep

feather-joep.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2789649%27,%27feather-joep.jpg%27,1,0%29)

[slocik]

does it have to be made out of polygons ? Because its 5min of work to make super realistic feather using one polygn, and one 2048x2048 texture, normal, and transparancy map ....

[cannedmushrooms]

The Zsphere feather WIP

;)

Zspherefeather2.jpg
Zspherefeather1.jpg

[Medicinehorse7]

slocik,

They

[spaceboy412]

here's one i did very quickly, those are individual hairs.
this was just a test, i'd probably redo it, change the flow and some other minor details.
ZBrush-Document.jpg

[Medicinehorse7]

Spaceboy,


They should utlimately come out as a .OBJ export fully textured. That would be the most usefull.

Slocik,

I tried the 1 poly approach myself and it looks great except for when you are trying to replicate the front and back textures on the same feather. Plus the quill should really be a tapered bent cylinder.

If you look at the back of any feather, the quill is far more pronounced and tends to flatten at the base(having a small groove in the cylinder) especially on large feathers ie (Eagle) The fletch can be perhaps 2 poly sheets back to back that tends to be the approach I took with a Maya to Zbrush approach.

I used Adobe illustrator curves for the fletch with but make sure you reorder the vertice count to match on opposite sides, I then welded the fletch to the quill, and combined verts on the outside edge. the result was a wedge shaped fletch. The problems occur when you inport back into Zbrush.

The best 1 poly sheet feather technique I have found is using Bryce 6 of all things. I'll post some examples as soon as my new server is up and I can migrate files.

[spaceboy412]

well i hope someone provides something that works for you, also it would help if you posted pictures detailing what you just described, we're not all feather experts ;)
i'm not interested in winning or any of that, just tried it for fun because i never did a feather before.
my feather was around 500k polys so thats why i asked about staying within zbrush.

Jason, your method i think would yield very good results if you used more zpheres, but of course that would have a high poly count as well. I like your feather anyhow.

joep, interesting approach and outcome.

[Medicinehorse7]

Joep,

Nice effect for the quill perhaps replicating and reducing the size of the grooves can yield a better result. The quill came out nice and tapered and bent nicely. The fletch is stylish and has some potential.

CannedMushrooms,

I would envision that approach for more of the fluffy base feathers. I like the idea though.

Spaceboy,

Great look, on your last post that would be useful in an illustrative approach, What is your workflow?

Good start gentlemen thanks alot

[Ananta Wijaya]

hallo all....

im so excited feather to this chalanges. i try to make the
banksian feather. im mede the besic poly for feather and texture.

-
Medicinehorse7, i use the your texture for this ;) hope this ok ..ty

A
bulu1.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%2789672%27,%27bulu1.jpg%27,1,0%2 9)

[Medicinehorse7]

Ananta Wijaya,

Wow thats a great start! Whats the work flow--post some pics!


Guys here is some Feather information.

2.jpg 3.jpg 1.jpg

[Medicinehorse7]

I am sorry for the large up loads. But if you want good textures I have to provide large files.

Here are some of my feather scans. Since I am a native I can own feathers, which I use for ceremonial purposes. Here are the first of a set Of 12 I own. I challenge you to find their match anywhere on the net.

I am trusting that I will not see my featherrs plastered all over the net. If you want to use them outside of this challenge, please ask me. As for the other feathers already posted, they are from the net.

I will see what you can do with these. If you are very successful you will be given the complete set of 12 to work with!

The actual feather sizes are 14 inches long so stretch them a bit. Good luck and thanks again for participating.


eagle main1.jpg eagle main2.jpg mainright1.jpg mainright2.jpg

[slashpot]

Hey, thanks for all these, I'm a 2D wildlife artist and this is mighty useful! Been trying to model birds for a while so I can light them as I want and paint them.:tu:

[slocik]

Ok that was easy, it took 30 mins to find a way to do it, but in the end i used instances and curves to make it, its all made from few hundrets of tubes, and i unwraped it by pressing the planaruv in zbrush and fixing it a little in modo ;] Have fun with it, exactly 31,200 polys, quads ;]
heres the download link, 5 mb
http://www.sendspace.com/file/td3re3

heres the uvs, and the big version screens;]
feather 3 uv.jpg (javascript:zb_insimg('89742','feather%203%20uv.jp g',1,0))
feather 3.jpg (javascript:zb_insimg('89743','feather%203.jpg',1, 0))

[spaceboy412]

slocik, this is a nice feather, exactly how did you do this in zbrush? what i mean is how did you get those cyliders to repeat like that?

[Medicinehorse7]

slocik,

This is a very easy solution, and the best i have seen so far.

Some questions however can you post your workflow?

Please use the texture of one of the Eagle feathers that I posted to test the plyability of the feather (system) that you have established. Try splitting the Vane down to the Shaft on 1.

The other question I have, is that some feathers have 1 texture on the front and another completely different in the back.

I like your feather solution in that it will work in the creation of primaries, contours, as well as more fluffy varients.

[cannedmushrooms]

you know you could always use a cheap method of Maya paint effects. After you make a feather / feathers you can modify Convert it into a poly object. Then slap a texture on it.


Didnt see any eagle feathers though.

feathers.jpg

[Medicinehorse7]

Hey guys did we run out of wind that fast on this challenge?

[spaceboy412]

well i think you got some fine submissions already, i'm kinda confused as to what else you want, you want one that actually has the barbules?
you havent said if you're animating your bird or for a still image, nor how detailed and closeup it will be on the feathers.
Why not post what you have made, it might help give people more direction.
Also you haven't commented on Cannedmushrooms idea about using PaintFx, is that viable for you?
Slocik made a very usable feather as well.
confused:confused:

[Medicinehorse7]

spaceboy412,

I suppose your reply is warrented if not right on the nose. I feel slocik hammered the challenge so well as to scare of the other ideas.

cannedmushroom's Solution is very simple as well and yields an appropriate result for fast efficient feathers.

What I had in my mind is a way much like slociks, but has an arch in the center.

If you lay down a contour feather on the table you will see the arch in the center, as well as a curve to the left or the right ast various degrees, according to which ever side the feather is on and what particular feather it id away from the central feathers. If you were to animate a feathers much like the one seen spinning in Forrest Gumps opening sequence you will find it is much different than those seen here so far.

To create a thin more waxlike smooth zbrush varient would be nice to see.
Its too bad Zbrush doesnt have a (vector line mask tool) that would be soooo sweet and solve many problems.

Thank you again for the comments and work. As for me Im stuck in paper hell for about 2 months and will not be able to produce much as my entire lab is being reconfigured and fine tuned.

[cannedmushrooms]

Hear Hear on the vector line mask tool.
The line tool under the 2.5D tools is amazing, And would be an great tool in 3D brush world.
Now if only sombody at pixologic would see it as useful and put down the preverbal donut for a sec, to take notes so our children's childrens might see it in Zbrush 4.0 we'll be all set.

[spaceboy412]

MH7, you do realize you can just take slociks model and turn it into what you are talking about, not to mention all the other feathers you need. Using move, transpose, brushes etc.

[Medicinehorse7]

spaceboy412,

I do realize that and I understand that the solution is very simple, I am proud of slocik's model and respect the time and effeort everyone has put in.

Does anyone know the names of the modelers for Lord of the Rings, I know the list is huge, but there must be some way of finding out --- the eagle workflow as well as several other movies I have seen featuring feathers and flight.

I believe that ZBrush can and does offer a stand alone solution for many modeling aspects. I am just excited to see what envelopes can be pushed and eceeded, and which remain outside of Z's power.

Perhaps this is a threshold that may be of interest to the developers of the next ZBrush version.

[spaceboy412]

hey MH7 you should check this out:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?p=450368#post450368

[Medicinehorse7]

spaceboy412,

Thanks alot for the heads up, I'll pm him to see if he's interested.

[kadewey]

I've been working on a sparrow and have yet to impart a feathered texture to the little fellow. I mean texture in the sculptural sense, not the ZBrush sense. I came up with this system for making feathers and I hope to use the results to grab Alphas for my little bird. I made a quill, appended it to a vane and used an Alpha I drew in PaintShop Pro to impart the texture in Projection Master. This thread and others proved very helpful.
Thanks,
Katherine Dewey