What is this project about?
For this week's project, I wanted to learn how to to use the feather tool in Cinema 4D. I also wanted to work a little more in Photoshop on the final texturing, rendering and general look for the images I created.
Workflow
The modeling for the feathers in all done in Cinema 4D, using the feather tool. Below is a screenshot of the no 1 feather in the tool. It all starts with a spline (the feather rachis).
Then, the tool provides a lot of ways to control the barbs that grow along the rachis: their length, angle, gaps, shape. Below, I show a screen shot of the splines which control the general shape of each of the feather's sides.
So the tool is very powerful, but it takes a lot of trial and errors to get something that looks like a feather (see my multiple attempts on my work in progress).
The hair renderer provides a lot of options to control the rendering of the feather barbs. Below are a few examples of the same feather renderered with different settings for the hair material. Clearly, you can get widely different results!
Compositing in Photoshop
I find that more and more, I am using fairly basic rendering settings in Cinema 4D and I spend a lot more time in Photoshop, working on the compositing, final rendering and adjustments. Below is the no 1 feather out of Cinema 4D (on the left) and after texturing and adjustments in Photoshop (on the right).
