Work in progress (Patreon)

This month I spent most of my time completing the two last things I had to do before I could make alicorns, which was to make a new fur texture and wings. The new fur texture is set up in a nice way that makes cutie marks fuzzy looking. And the new wings are stylized to fit with the pony design.

With those two major parts completed I am going to be working on Luna and Celestia next so that I can start making image sets. And when the princesses are done I am going to start to animate on the Fluttershy + Twilight animation.

I have always thought that wings were really difficult to make in 3D, so this is the first time I have been able to succesfully make wings that both looks good and is properly rigged so the wings can be animated to be opened, closed and flapping.

Closeup pictures of the new fur texture. Mostly noticable on the cutie mark, but there's also a noticable fur pattern visible elsewhere too:

Fur is visible across the body, even the face, which makes the ponies "skin" look detailed. Something that was missing in the previous update:

New stylized wing model

For Fluttershy I experimented with wings that use two colors, this is something that is customizable. So Fluttershy can have a colorful variation of yellow and pink, while Rainbow Dash uses blue and dark blue (less of a color difference). This is a good addition to the different character traits I am able to do, to make each pony/character look unique.

Feather length for the outer feathers can be adjustable too, so I am planning to make them a bit longer for the alicorns to get that majestic look.

The new wings are using a lot more stylized and sharper/cleaner shapes than before. And it also has a smooth transition to the body. I am happy with how they turned out, I might adjust the amount of cuts in the feathers and color placement later (but those are small quick tweaks).
The wings were really difficult and time consuming to make, so I am glad they are done once and for all.

I did a folding test of the wing to test out the rigging. It works good, only some minor stretching overall. But stretching is kinda unavoidable when a model has to bend and hug tigthly like a wing has to do.
A mistake on my end while doing the test was that I did not position the outer feathers behind the inner feathers when it is fully closed, I was confused about how wings actually close. But it's a good test regardless since it shows that the wing can bend a lot. ;)

1. Opened:

2. Half closed:

3. Closed: