A Real-time, Multiscale and Procedural Feather Appearance Model

We propose a complete pipeline for modeling and rendering realistic bird feathers from a single photograph, achieving both high visual fidelity and practical efficiency. Given a single input image of a feather, our approach extracts the feather's shaft curve, outline, and albedo, then reconstructs a compact hierarchical representation in a planar/curve (UV) domain. This representation encodes fine barb and barbule details procedurally, enabling continuous multiscale rendering with correct self-shadowing and masking. We analyze the appearance phenomena of different feathers and propose a new feather scattering model for non-iridescent feathers (e.g., parrot feathers), while introducing an additional sheen lobe to capture the distinctive fluffy rim-lighting effect. Our pipeline produces consistent, realistic results under arbitrary lighting and viewing conditions, and achieves real-time performance with a minimal memory footprint (0.02% of explicit-fiber geometry models), making it a practical solution for digital feather rendering without compromising realism.