Material for Feathers

[dave-c]

Hello

I am experimenting with different shaders for feathers (still on the bird).

My first thought was to use Standard Hair but I am not really getting the results I want from it. The specular is quite hard to control - basically, it looks a bit too much like hair. The feathers are coming from Houdini and there is a feather atlas texture that contributes the base colour and if I set the melanin value to anything other than zero, the colour of the feather gets mixed with that, which feels odd. Ideally I want something that will pick up some backlighting quite strongly like the hair shader, but have a bit more control like a regular Standard Surface.

Any thoughts or suggestions from anyone who has tried it? Is there anything new in 2026 that might be useful?

Thanks

Dave

[lee_griggs · Accepted solution]

Have you tried Thin Walled in the OpenPBR Surface shader? Adding some images here would help identify the look you are wanting/going for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wFMWZK9_uE

[dave-c]

Thanks for the excellent suggestion @lee_griggs 

I will experiment with that - the feathers come out as curves from Houdini I think - not sure exactly would work with the thin walled, but just doing a quick test looked promising.

Am a bit anxious about render times with 8 diffuse ray depth though...