Question regarding feathers/fur

Godzy

For the past few years I've been making Dota 2 assets but a few months ago I've started taking some Animation/Game Design classes. Now we've started working on the final project which is a Short Animated Film and I'm a bit stuck on a certain character.

Since my experience is only limited to game assets, I have absolutely no idea how to approach fur/feathers at a movie level of detail. The character would be a bird, somewhat similar to the one from the Overwatch Bastion short film.

I've been digging through tuts and videos but there are so many approaches that I can't really tell which workflow would give me that specific result.

A comparison between Bastion's in-game birdy and short film version:

oglu

those feathers for the cinematic bird are done in maya with xgen...

here is a tutorial how it could work...
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/pegasus-xgen-maya-1510

Godzy

oglu said:

those feathers for the cinematic bird are done in maya with xgen...

here is a tutorial how it could work...
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/pegasus-xgen-maya-1510

Thanks for that! Just watched some parts of it (guess that black friday pluralsight sub came in handy) but i still have a few questions regarding the pipeline.

I'm thinking about sculpting everything (including the feathers) and using xgen on the "low poly" to create that body fur. Would it be too much pain animating the whole thing afterwards? Or does it just work with transferred weights?

Also, how does texturing work for fur? I was planning to use substance painter for most of the props.

oglu

rigging feathers is a complex task nothing for a beginner... and to get the highres data onto the animation mesh use a displacement map...

any texturing ap will be fine...

Godzy

oglu said:

rigging feathers is a complex task nothing for a beginner... and to get the highres data onto the animation mesh use a displacement map...

any texturing ap will be fine...

Funny way to put it. 5 years ago when I asked my first question on polycount people were just as dismissive/discouraging. Tho I had no problem making a living even from the first months after starting. My question was aimed for a specific task/workflow, not "how 3D works". I guess some things will never change in this community.

Anyway, thanks for pointing me in the right(?) direction.