I'm currently creating a small bird model in Maya 2026, and I'm really struggling with the feathers. My current approach is to create feather cards using XGen Interactive Groom and use alpha textures for the individual feathers. However, I recently came across a high-quality crow model from VFX Grace, and I noticed that their feather cards seem to vary significantly depending on the area of the body. The cards have different sizes, shapes, and silhouettes, and many of them are actually shaped more like real feathers rather than simply being rectangular cards. This seems to contribute a lot to the realism of the final result. What would be the best approach for creating high-quality feathers like this in Maya? For example, would it be better to create several different feather card shapes for different parts of the body and distribute them over the surface, or is there a more procedural workflow using XGen, MASH, or another system? I'm not necessarily committed to using feather cards. My main goal is simply to achieve the highest-quality result possible, so I'm also open to completely different approaches if there is a better workflow for realistic bird feathers. If anyone has experience creating production-quality bird feathers in Maya, I'd really appreciate any advice on the workflow, especially how you handle different feather types, shapes, layering, and placement across different parts of the body. I've been struggling with this quite a lot, so any advice or references would be greatly appreciated!   submitted by   /u/Late-Teaching-7846 [link]   [comments]