procedural feather

the beginnings of a procedural feather generator

stuff I've though about so far:
proxy / hi res toggle - currently the 'fronds'can be turned off but ideally it'd be nice to have a few polygons with the render UVmapped on automagically

the user can adjust :

• the position along the stem where the fronds start
• the sweep thickness of the stem via ramp
• the poly detail of the stem
• the overall shape of the fronds via a ramp
• the angle fronds grow out and down toward the base of the feather
  vs how perpendicular from the stem they are
• the number of fronds and the detail of the curves 
• the render width of the fronds / curves.
• the thickness of the individual fronds via a ramp
• the noise on the fronds
• the overall  bend and twist of the feather

Further stuff i want to have a crack at:

a procedural colouring system based on real feathers
subtle randomisation tests on most parameters
irridescent shading
a texture generation system for low res geometry.

UN-subdivide

rob kelly nutted this out for me...

put in a subdivided mesh with no history...and get the UN-subdivided equivalent out of it.

he uses a VOPSOP that counts how many neighbors a point has, and if it has 4, then
it can be removed. The trick is to delete every second face first , then check every points neighbor count,
then on another version, delete every second face/prim - but starting from prim #1 as opposed to prim  #0,
then repeat the neighbor count and point removal.

Combining the two results gets you the un-subdivided mesh.

The example file is on odforce here, and shows two methods of achieving the same result.

nice work Rob Kelly ! :)

NOKIA E60 rendered with Mantra