The Ornithopter

The Ornithopter was Da Vinci's attempt to mimic the way that a bird moves it's wings to achieve the lift it needs to fly.
This model consists of basic shapes, fitted together like pieces of a jigsaw. The challenge with this model came when trying to add the wings.
For this I decided that the easiest thing to do would be to find a picture that I could use to create a texture that would match the wings, much like we did with the leaf tutorial detailed in earlier posts.
I found a suitable image and imported it into Photoshop. From here I cropped the image until I had the desired segment and then outlined the area I wanted and neatened it up by placing another layer underneath the original and creating a tight fit around the shape I wanted.

I then had the picture (texture) that I wanted and a black background with the exact outline of the image. I could then import the texture as normal into the material editor. Once I did this I had the wing set against a white background. In order to get rid of this I imported the cut-out image into the opacity section leaving just the wing texture.

Finally I created a plane and textured it with the wing image and positioned it.
Second model, finished.