Workflow for the groom Using Xgen splines and grooming tools, it helps to able splines seems pretty straight-forward feathers on a Bird.
Place Feathers on a Bird With Maya Xgen and Gromabile Splines
Making some basic geometry that Xgen Interactive will use to place feathers on the surface of another object. XGen is a geometry instancer that lets you populate the surface of polygon meshes with an arbitrary variety of primitives either randomly or uniformly placed. XGen lets you procedurally create and fashion hair, fur, and feathers for characters.