The main things I have been thinking about for my Eagle are the movement of the eagles wings and feathers, as well as how I plan to texture the bird once it is modeled. Some options I have thought about include using the Maya Hair system textured with feathers to create a dynamic feather system, using geometry and sculpting the feathers on the wings, or testing out a feather script which I have found a few of online.
I haven't locked off my storyboards yet, so the movement that my Eagle needs to have could still vary.
This tutorial is quite old but uses nurb planes for the feathers with feather textures and transparency maps applied. The tutorial suggests that various models might be needed for different actions rather than a single master model. This looks like a really useful tutorial as it shows the rigging used and sets up the fanning feathers as a set driven key. Most of the discussions I've seen online about bird feathers and wings mention this tutorial.
This is the example wing flap from the site:
Jackal. (2001). Sourced from http://www.jackals-forge.com/tutor/tut1.html
This is another old tutorial for a cartoony bird. The feathers of the body are extruded directly from polygon edges. However this tutorial contains triangulated polygons, which I will not be using.
This tutorial suggests feathers using displacement maps together with individually modeled larger feathers on the wing that would be created using Maya nhair. It gives this example in which the pink feathers would be a solid mesh with a displacement map and the blue would be individually modeled.
(Model by David Krentz)
The tutorial goes on to explain how to convert a nhair system into PFX geometry planes with can then be textured and opacity mapped. It suggests shading with an anisotropic material with painted direction maps but I don't know what that is.
While researching I also came across this test which I thought was really quite beautiful.
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