Eagle texturing

I've finally finished what i've found to be the most time-consuming piece of this module so far!

My Eagle render currently has over 4000 individual feathers so you can imagine how much time this took to create not to mention render by 2800 x 1900!

I started off trying to unwrap the different parts of the eagle and texturing that way, however after attempting only the body of the eagle, I found this was not the effect I was hoping for and scrapped this idea:

This experiment encouraged the idea of texturing the Eagle using individual planes with a feather image similar to the way I have done my Wings.

Now came the hard part, the feathers need to be 'wrapped' around the eagle to get the feathery effect I have been looking for. The angles of the shape were very challenging in some areas to get right and give the illusion of being covered in feathers.

I then added an omni Light to the scene to pick out the front feather and give the behind ones a shadowy efect. The light also helped illumniate certain areas of the model which made the feathering slightly easy to do.

I started by added feathers to the face and working my way around the eagle's head..