Eye Setups

[ZippZopp]

I wanted to get a discussion going with regards to modeling, texturing and shading eyes. I'm going to get a few examples together in the next few days to show a bit of the way I do mine, however, I'm really interested to see how everyone else goes about setting them up.

[PascalR]

Nice topic!:sw: I'll try to post some images eventually but my setup is quite basic:
2 objects for the eyeball : a super transparent cornea geo only getting reflections , not casting shadows, and an inner geo for the white and iris.
I am faking the refraction with a concave mesh for the iris and I use sss on this piece. The meniscus is a separate piece of geo which is using the same shader as for the cornea.

:beerchug:

[Tomaya]

As pascal , same method . The most important for me is the spot of reflection on the cornea , it must be very bright to be realistic...

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/5487/tomeyessetup.jpg (http://img294.imageshack.us/i/tomeyessetup.jpg/)

[El Burritoh]

In addition to the actual geometry and shading of the eye, the catchlight is critical, as Thomas pointed out. If you study portrait photography, you'll see that this catchlight is critical to conveying identity and life. Different realworld light modifiers give different catch lights. The advantage in 3D, of course, is that you can make the catchlight any shape you like.

Here are two photographic examples. The first shows a strong catchlight, bringing extra life to the person:

http://timcrowson.smugmug.com/People/Family-and-Friends/DSC6583/134329843_QFpkP-M.jpg


The second shows how a weak catchlight can help convey a certain mood as well.

http://timcrowson.smugmug.com/People/Family-and-Friends/DSC0634/224529732_HeUGf-M.jpg


So as Thomas said, the lighting and reflection on the cornea is critical.

[ZippZopp]

so mine is pretty similar to everyone else. I've got a transparent sphere that is reflective for the cornea. it has the bulge on the front. under that I have the eye modeled with an indent for the iris area. I also put a strip of geometry on the lower lid that touches the eye to get a slight wet look.

On future projects I think i'm going to model the tear duct and insert it in there instead of trying to sculpt it in.

material wise, I've had some luck with the MIA shader for the cornea, but I can also get some nice results with a blinn using the sampler info node with a ramp to control the fresnel. with the eyeball itself I do give it some SSS, but often times I feel like it can get too soft and I don't get a slight contact shadow where the top lid hits the eyeball.

http://zopfx.com/wips/eye_setup.jpg

[PascalR]

Thanks guys for sharing your techinques, here are my screenshots.

cheers

P.

755

756

[ZippZopp]

is that maya fur for your eyelashes and brows?

also, my current WIP of a head (which I'll post soon) I'm modeling the caruncula and tear duct as separate piece much like you have pascal. my worry though is the blend between the eyeball and that piece of geo. looking at a lot of reference, it is obvious that it attaches itself to the eyeball and it most noticeable when the eye looks far to the side. you can see it stretch with the eyeball. what do you all think for getting a nice blend between that piece of geometry and the eyeball?

[PascalR]

yep , Maya fur for eyelashes and eyebrows :)
I think you can help the connection with a fleshy color on the eyeball and make the meniscus go all the way around the eyelids to get a nice highlight between eyeball and tear duct.

Here is a photo I took to explain:

757

Cheers

P.

[Intervain]

good stuff thnx for sharing guys - don't have any screencaps on me but I'm basically doing the same as everybody here - 2 meshes + 1 for the wet look. I also tried getting a nice 'ramp' look on the white eye part [where it's touching the iris] with the sss before but failed miserably ;) Anyone actually had luck with sss and transparency? I've never tried it in maya but it's a complete no go in xsi. I started rendering more in Maya now [learning still] so I'm curious if it's working together? Good tip with the meniscus Pascal:thumbsup:

[BrettSinclair]

Sss with transparency in maya mental ray. It does work. But haven't tested it in a batch render.

Heres a few rendered frames with only ibl and a screen cap of the geo. I haven't added texture to the sclera its just default sss shader colours. The setup is a secret:D.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/1771/eyessstransparency.jpg

[MikeANash]

Nice tips guys clap

Are the majority of you guys mapping a .hdri onto their environment slot for their reflections mat on the outside of the eye or just on the skylight itself ?

I always seem to get bad reflections from hdri's for some reason.

[PaulAdams]

Okay, so along with the shader work how do you guys approach the placement of the eye.

Do you use a rule of thumb for the size of the iris/pupil when using spheres?

I also wonder about the direction - straight ahead always looks wrong and dead, so do you guys rotate them outward at all?

[migusan76]

Here are some old renders of my eye setups. I go with the same style modeling setup like you guys. For the shading I'm using mental ray and a custom SSS shader I've developed for it. Awesome Thread! clap

http://www.digiteck3d.com/forum_images/sketchBook/eyeSetups00.jpg

http://www.digiteck3d.com/forum_images/sketchBook/EyeRenderTestMR00.jpg

[BrettSinclair]

I thought that by now I'd get a boo for not sharing the sss transparency setup:P. Heh. So heres the scene file without the textures, if anyone is interested..

Feel free to test it out. If you make changes for the better it would be cool too see what people do. Its a pretty simple setup at the moment.

[PascalR]

Thanks for the file Brett, will definitely check it outclap

[gal]

superb thread..
i wanted to point something out not shader/render related but anatomy wise.

i have yet to figure out the correct size/placement/rotation of human eyes but i've done a lot of research on it. i wonder if any of you came to the same conclusions or different ones.

1. seems back of the eye(part facing the brain is squashed and the front as well by just a bit. not a sphere. though it doesnt impact much on the eye setup process.

2. the eyes arent spaced by an "eye" apart but it varies per person? can be from 0.9-1.8 eyes apart, can anyone confirm? meaning the eye size it self varies between people.

3. i read on medical journals the size of the eye cornea/iris can vary by 10% max in every human, meaning there is roughly a specific size that varies only a little bit. but no one seems to agree it's a fact anywhere.

4. if 3 is correct, is there a specific relationship between the iris scale and the eyeball? or does it also vary? how does that connect with 2 then..

5. the eyes are cross-eyed outwards, meaning looking at say mri shots from above you can see without a specific focus each eye is directed outwards
however, when look/talk to people they focus at us, meaning usually people eyes are focused on mid-close objects so they need to be cross-eyed towards not outwards..so how does that work with the natural eye location is outwards?

6. the eye in the eye socket and wrapped with the eye lids does not sit in the center, the iris/pupil seems to be in the center of the eyelids(from left to right) and looking straight the eyeball is exactly behind it centered. but it's not, the eye ball is actually cross-eyed outwards and down, the eyeball is sitting higher and inwards towards the nose so the iris/pupil is actually on the lower outwards off center of the eyeball(i mean the eyeball is rotated to that direction) . i found an old final fantasy wireframe done by..i forgot his name(great modeler).. showing this effect and i never noticed this before i did this research.

perhaps im crazy and eyes are straight but maybe some of these are correct? what do you guys think?

[BrettSinclair]

@gal. Nice observations. I think you answered your own questions :).

I'm trying too attach eyelashes too the eyelid for animation purposes in maya. I tried riveting the lashes on, which worked great. But when I finished the one eye lag was really bad and you couldn't really animate it that way.

Does anyone have any ideas of how too attach the lashes? I tried a wrap but it does some funky stuff:P.

[arthurduque]

Great Topic Very helpfull

[Tomala]

Gal in fact eye ball is about 2.5cm-2.8cm wide and the distance between centers of the irises is about 6.5 cm. What that mean is the distance between two eyeballs is for sure bigger than one eyeball ;)
When You look at the "eye" you also include conjunctiva and outer eyelashes to overall eye shape and thats why many artists says that distance beetween "eyes" equal one eye, not eyeball.

[Neox]

Sorry for digging out this old thread, but i've got a question, a rather strange one i guess.
Why is everyone, me including building the iris to be bent inwards? I can't remember when i started doing this but i guess its because i've seen good looking eyes a hell lot of time back, beeing built that way - or maybe it was a tutorial.
But looking at the actual eye anatomy in a lot of anatomical sheets lately i recognized that its actually bent outwards :eek:

who would have thought of that? i actually didn't!

http://www.visionsofjoy.org/images/eye%20anatomy1.jpg

http://www.websightmd.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/EyeAnatomy.jpg

http://www.visualhealth.com/Images/Anatomy+of+eye.jpg

i guess they cannot all be wrong, and while i don't have a medical anatomy book at hand i guess the results in there would be the same?
So why exactly do wo do it? Just because of the nice effect of light beeing caught on the cornea as a specular highlight and on the iris a more diffuse shading going on?

just wondering

[PascalR]

Hey Neox, for me it is just a cheap trick to get some fake iris refraction and inner caustics:D But yeah it isn't anatomically correct, you're right

[moonjam]

Hey Neox - I was thinking about this just the other day. I was looking at Suren Manvelyan's excellent close-ups of eyes & it struck me that the structure looks nothing like the eyes I model.

http://www.behance.net/paronsuren/Frame/428809

I think it was *shudder* Bill Fleming who I first saw use the concave shape for the iris & while it's definitely not accurate, I think both you & Pascal have hit the nail on the head in that it's a cheap/quick way to get more interest into the shading & highlights.

[keraj37]

Hi, anyone knows how to make realistic eyes in mr and 3ds max? I am trying but nothing come out yet :/

[Kel Solaar]

Invaluable research work from the Inria done last year : Image-Based Modeling of the Human Eye

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2009.24

and it's associated video :

http://www2.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/dl/trans/tg/2009/05/extras/ttg2009050815s.avi

KS

[Infinite]

Invaluable research work from the Inria done last year : Image-Based Modeling of the Human Eye

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2009.24

and it's associated video :

http://www2.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/dl/trans/tg/2009/05/extras/ttg2009050815s.avi

KS

Sweet find! thanks Kel, I've never seen an eye replicated in real-time like that before. Killer work.

Another cool thread on CGFeedback :beerchug:

[adamlewis]

Thanks for all the info in this thread. I've been very weak at rendering eyes, so I threw myself at the problem the last few days to see what I could come up with in Vray. It's still a WIP, but I think I'm starting to figure out a solid model for realistic eyes. One thing that helped a lot was understanding how the sclera merges and blends with the cornea, creating an opaque band around the iris that helps seat it into place. So instead of having the iris and sclera share the same geometry (that seems to be the standard approach), I have the sclera and cornea share the same geometry, and use the vrayblendmtl to blend a refractive vraymtl for the transparent cornea with a vraysss2 for the fleshy sclera. Hope that makes some sense. Here's the WIP so far:

http://adamvfx.com/Eyes1.jpg

[meshmasters]

I've been very weak at rendering eyes, so I threw myself at the problem the last few days to see what I could come up with in Vray. It's still a WIP, but I think I'm starting to figure out a solid model for realistic eyes.

Interesting. Looks like you are making good progress, great job so far. :thumbsup:

Cheers,

Joe

[adamlewis]

Thanks, Joe. If there is much interest I might share the scene file so others can learn from it. I had to jump through a lot of annoying technical hoops to get the different shaders to play nice with each other. Here's a small update with a few tweaks and updated geometry for the cornea.

http://adamvfx.com/Eyes2.jpg

[meshmasters]

Thanks, Joe. If there is much interest I might share the scene file so others can learn from it. I had to jump through a lot of annoying technical hoops to get the different shaders to play nice with each other. Here's a small update with a few tweaks and updated geometry for the cornea.

Well, I'd like to voice my interest (that's one vote...LOL). But yes, I'm sure this was pretty tricky to pull off. Looks like you've come up with a great solution, it's looking pretty awesome. Nice R&D, kudos!

Cheers,

Joe

[MikeANash]

Great Stuff Adam, another vote here :)

[mpalleschi]

Always down to learn more, especially about vray

[migusan76]

:thumbsup: Nice addition Adam!

[Infinite]

Thanks for all the info in this thread. I've been very weak at rendering eyes, so I threw myself at the problem the last few days to see what I could come up with in Vray. It's still a WIP, but I think I'm starting to figure out a solid model for realistic eyes. One thing that helped a lot was understanding how the sclera merges and blends with the cornea, creating an opaque band around the iris that helps seat it into place. So instead of having the iris and sclera share the same geometry (that seems to be the standard approach), I have the sclera and cornea share the same geometry, and use the vrayblendmtl to blend a refractive vraymtl for the transparent cornea with a vraysss2 for the fleshy sclera. Hope that makes some sense. Here's the WIP so far:


Nice work Adam, I would be very interested to see how the eye reacts with light movement. Especially with a strong light source on one side, to see if it picks up the canal channel under the iris-cornea haze layer. You can notice this if you *carefully* shine a dim torch or light across the side of your face, the light just picks up a small rim underneath the haze/foggy part above the iris.

Would also love to see how your eye is modelled.

Great work :thumbsup:

[PascalR]

Sharing the scene would be quite generous of you and I am sure it would be very beneficial for a lot of people.

Looking great, cheers:thumbsup:

[adamlewis]

Ok guys, you convinced me ;), here's the scene: www.adamvfx.com/AdamEyeVray.rar

For convenience sake I included the sIBL I was using in the archive. It was originally obtained here: www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

Because this scene was very much a process of learning-as-I-go, few of the shader settings are set in stone. They are merely the values that worked at the time. I invite you to tweak things to see if you can come up with a more pleasing result; I am certain many of the settings I'm using are far from the ideal.

Lee: Thanks. I am very familiar with the self-shadowing effect you are referring to, it's what lead me to the current model I am using for the eye. The iris geometry is separate from the sclera and cornea, and I use a mask to modulate between the sclera and cornea on the outer geometry. I currently have it so the sclera ever-so-slightly creeps up the sides of the cornea, to give a little bit of self-shadowing on the iris under lighting at extreme angles. Right now the effect isn't too strong, so either the sclera needs to occlude more of the cornea, or I might need to push the iris back a little, so it is more inset into the sclera. In principle though, my setup should allow for self-shadowing, it's just a matter of tweaking things.

[meshmasters]

Ok guys, you convinced me ;),


Hi Adam,

Thank you SO much for sharing your scene with us, I'm really looking forward to checking this out in more depth. Honestly, thanks a million!

:thumbsup:

Cheers,

Joe

[Infinite]

Very interesting Adam, it is very kind and generous of you to share your results. When I get time I will try and open the file and have a play. :thumbsup::notWorthy:

It would be great to see others repay the favour of the download by sharing their results? no? :beerchug:

brown eyes? violet eyes! cats eyes! etc etc

[oglu]

working on a new char... and id like to do some animation tests...
so getting the geometry around the eye right will be important...

found two methods to create the loops for an eye...
around the eye or more like a bow...

think both will work...
but how much loops i need in the animation mesh...?
its much harder to ad an extra loop if you choose the bow variant like me...




here what i have so far...
3802

[Kel Solaar]

Christoph, you will have issues with this topology :


The eyes in a general manner are built around circular muscles :
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/images/ency/fullsize/19661.jpg
If you want to do contraction shapes without this structure you'll have troubles.
You don't have enough loops to do a proper blink, you need a least 2 or 3 times the number, especially if you want a proper control
You need to have the same number of loops on the upper eyelid and the bottom one so you can close / stitch them nicely ( Same goes for the lips ) and it will be easier for you to do the shapes.
I'm not sure about the topology singularity area in the inner corner, try keep it simple and concentric if you can.


Voilà :)

Thomas

[oglu]

thanks for input... i will add some extra loops...
found a rigging reel with an eye...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytW8UW8yASc

[Lapaev]

thats an interesting reel found oglu!

[kpamir]

This is amazing!

So much to learn.

Thanks to the thread starter and the many contributors.

I've been working on my own eye set up and will post when I get it done.

[keraj37]

:) happy new year!

Silly eyes in vray 2, that I am working on now.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6641/72229811.jpg

[vargatom]

Christoph, you will have issues with this topology :

The eyes in a general manner are built around circular muscles


I disagree with that for one reason, the wrinkles (crow's feet) have a general direction that's more important to accommodate then the underlying muscles. We're interested in sculpting the surface and for that we should use the wrinkles as guidelines for the loops.

I've been watching Fringe recently and the lead actress is a pretty good example.
http://static.cinemagia.ro/img/db/actor/15/19/45/anna-torv-669769l.jpg

Take a look at the lines right under her eyes, it'd not be possible to retrace them with circular topology.

Now look at Neytiri and see how the lines go around her eyes:
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/3059/neytiriwiresmall.jpg

[Kel Solaar]

Tamas : A circular topology doesn't prevent you to sculpt / feature the crows feet wrinkles.

KS

Edit : Thanks for the Neytiri grabs btw :)

[Kel Solaar]

Tamas, you gave me an idea in fact :)

I did a quick video of my my eye with the 5D. I'll try another one tomorrow with more light coming into the flat, a smaller aperture and using the Magic Lantern firmware to get more quality :]

The puppy is 100 mo with no P-Frames.

http://thomasmansencal.com/Sharing/Pictures/Reference_Eye_001.jpg

http://thomasmansencal.com/Sharing/Videos/Reference_Eye_001.mov

KS

[vargatom]

Tamas : A circular topology doesn't prevent you to sculpt / feature the crows feet wrinkles.

You can sculpt the wrinkles you've marked on the picture, but those aren't the only ones. Look again at the picture of the actress I've posted.

There are lines going under the lower eyelids, which are almost completely horizontal. These do not originate from the corners of the eye as the rest. Many of the radial lines from a circular topology would run diagonally to these wrinkles, making it very hard to create the shapes.
These lines are clearly visible on your - very cool! - reference movie as well. Of course not everyone has them, the patterns change with every individual just as any other lines on the face (the old mad scientist is very different for example), but there are certain common types.

I only mention this because I had a lot of trouble with these wrinkles, until I've seen the Neytiri image last year and implemented the changes to our characters as well.

[Kel Solaar]

Yeah ok, I understand what you mean.

For those kind of wrinkles when we did it on "Don't look back" I remember Richard ( Raimbaut ) and Laurent "Nzo" Heirvec went one subdivision layer higher ( So that they get enough edges, not only for that area but for all the eye in a general matter ).

They did the maximum with what was available to them and I refined the result with some animated displacement reacting to the contraction areas.

It would be worth testing with an adapted topology for sure, making the flesh slide toward the "crows feet wrinkles" and compressing may be a lot easier.

KS

[Kel Solaar]

Came across DD Tron Making Of :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhyScbAZrFs&feature=player_embedded

They display their topology a bit, it's interesting to notice that it's a lot lighter than Neytiri one, they may rely a lot on shape driven displacement. I didn't saw the film yet, but it seems the guy has a much more pronounced "CG feel" than Benjamin Button.

KS

[BrettSinclair]

Can't wait too see it. The ben button mesh was also similar.

[vargatom]

Curiously, the first time they show the wireframe, it's of a level of subdivision higher. Could simply be a case of applying a polysmooth modifier before making the render, though.

On the other hand, here's two quotes about the Avatar facerigs from CGTalk, most likely from people involved in the production:

Jeff Unay and his team worked with extremely high res meshes to sculpt in wrinkles and other details and used no displacement maps at all. This was to allow facial wrinkling to occur on the mesh itself rather than it dissolving on and off with displacement maps. Animation director Andy Jones said that a facial rig of this complexity with such a dense mesh couldn't have been attempted 5 years ago as the processing power and graphic card speeds simply didn't exist.

This way of doing things just replaces the need for using driven-displacement (wrinkle) maps on the face. They'll still be using regular ol' displacement maps on the face to cover the finer detail in the skin.

Funnily enough, there are some Weta or ex-Weta guys among the moderators on this forum, too ;) but I understand if they can't comment on these issues.

[keraj37]

Here are my eyes in vray 2.0 and sss2:

If anyone wants the setup, let me know.

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/5258/render4detale.jpg

[migusan76]

clap awesome to see this great thread still up and running with some really good topics and info. Keraj37 really nice setup, almost disturbing how real the skin tissue looks. :confused:

[kpamir]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nyXPWzJhZG4/TTOPHTTBupI/AAAAAAAAA8U/tZi9BnHSIKE/s1600/eye_1.jpeg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nyXPWzJhZG4/TTOPH3SL-0I/AAAAAAAAA8Y/UdF9rsRcSE8/s1600/eye_2.jpeg


Here are some tests I have been working on in preparation for some new models I'll be working on.

I'd love to get everyone's opinions on it. What works, what doesn't, what should I change? etc.

Cheers.

KP.

[denz3d]

Some invaluable knowledge here, thanks everyone.

kpamir, looking nice. They might be a bit too red, is that the sss?

I just came across these amazing photos of close-ups of eyes (http://www.behance.net/gallery/Your-beautiful-eyes/428809)

That's som high frequency detail right there :D

[ZippZopp]

i built another eye with a modeled iris from a torus and just an outer shell with the corneal bulge on it. that has transparency on it so it cuts out the cornea and i have the sss shader hooked up for the eye white.. what i'm liking is the nice transition and shadow from the white into the iris.

no real maps here except for a color map on the iris which was somewhat quick and dirty.

http://zopfx.com/wips/eye_render_01.jpg

[Kel Solaar]

Hi Peter :)

That's the way we do it on our film. I did quite a few modeling / rendering tests in my corner with a very complex modeling setup, that I ran through multiple simplification iterations to the minimal efficient requirements ( We needed to dispatch it on like 40-50 characters with different iris sizes ). Once it was validated on my side, the model was sent to the shading / surfacing team, followed some minor adjustments. We have however one more inner cap between the cornea and iris for the aqueous humor ( Apparently it was cooler with it :] ).

KS

[BrettSinclair]

Looking good. I like that soft transition. It needs some sort of caustic effect on the iris. Especially with that direct light hitting hit. Though it could just be a texture thing later on.

[ZippZopp]

I'll make one more pass at it with some texture and shader updates. I think you're right brett about needing some specularity and caustic effect on the iris. and thanks for the tip on the SSS transparency :)

kel: for the aqueous humor, is it just mapped with a transparent and refractive shader? and what was the overall shape of it? did it fully fill the space between the cornea and the iris or just something more flat sitting on top of the iris?

[Kel Solaar]

Peter : It's just a basic inner surface offset of the cornea with a pure refractive shader, there is also some room to play with it's reflection settings for various effects.

You can of course have a similar effect playing with the refraction index of the cornea. Here are some quickies to illustrate the thing ( I really spent 5 mins on this, be gentle :) ) .

On the side the "suction" effect of the iris is particularly visible.

KS

[MikeANash]

Nice eye setup Peter.

Maybe Kel and Peter can try this out,

I think the iris needs more of a layerd effects with a displacement map on it to catch the shadows.
Seems like there are very deep areas creating those darker effects in the iris. I can imagine if they react with the light it will create a more convincing effect of depth within the eye.

Also a very strong specular map and sss effect on iris alone is needed to the catch and absorb light.
I would even try layering 2 specular effects for the iris mapped to an alpha to give off different specular colors.

4643

4644

4645

[ZippZopp]

Nice images mike and kel...thanks

i'll push my setup a bit more tonight and post some renders, i'll do some bump, spec and sss on the iris and paint some textures for the eye white

[kpamir]

Great updates guys.

What IOR are you guys using for the Cornea layer?

Should the IOR be the same as glass or should it be the IOR for water?

Or is it the same IOR as glass for the cornea, and then the IOR of water for the Aqueous minor?

[ZippZopp]

1.33 for my IOR on my cornea, but that is without the aqueous geometry so the cornea has to handle the refraction

here is an update, i fixed a small error in my shader which was killing some of my spec on the iris, here are some updates, mostly changes to the iris and transparency of the cornea. i added some spec to the iris along with a bit of bump. i'll work on the eye white area next

http://zopfx.com/wips/eye_render_02.jpg

[ulf]

really cool zipp zopp!

heres mine sofar

http://www.ulfgieseler.de/tmp/eyes_wip.jpg

[ZippZopp]

nice stuff ulf, same setup as mine? are you rendering in mental ray for maya?

[ulf]

thanks,
ive got two geometries. inner with sss and bumpmap for the iris and
outer with reflection + little bump. this one is rendered in modo.

[tonytrout]

Great thread and thanks for the info you guys have shared. I fooled around all day and came up with this, pretty much using Brett Sinclairs (:notWorthy:) mia and sss combo material on the eye and a blinn with a transparency map on the outside. I tried using refractions but I couldnt get the inner geo to show. Its my best eye so far but I will keep on working on some things I dont like.

4658 Maya mental ray render time 7s

[ZippZopp]

cool stuff tony, there are a few things i notice in yours that I had issues with in mine that required some fixing. I think first the iris is too big for the size of the eyeball, also, the bump for the cornea is casting some shading onto the eye white because the transparency isn't quite mapped properly to where the cornea shape starts to falloff into the eye white. i had some issues with mine regarding that and i had to keep manipulating the shape of the cornea along with where the transparency starts and ends to keep that shading from happening. it is most noticeable on the shade side, lower left of the iris.

also, another thing that i've done is use the MIA_material_x instead of the blinn, i like the highlights better and there is a bit more control over that shader in general. it only requires that you plug your SSS shader into the additional color slot of the MIA and also hook your lightmap up to the MIA's shading group

[Kel Solaar]

Tony : Peter is right, the iris diameter is equal to the radius of the eyeball : roughly 12mm diameter for a 24mm diameter eyeball.

KS

[tonytrout]

Thanks for the feedback guys, looking at it now it looks truely awful. I have tried to fix the things you say, hope this is better. I had a better render with a ramp to tone down the reflection on the white part but lost it somewhere along the way

4683

[ienrdna]

Look what I made.

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/6329/eye01.jpg

[vargatom]

Interesting to see how many people get both the iris size wrong at first, and the general eye size too. Just to make it clear, we've made these mistakes before, too ;)

I've also found the 24mm anatomical guideline to be a bit too small, but it's really hard to measure real people's eyes... and I probably also have a large head compared to the average ;)


Anyway, I've been working on rebuilding a game character recently and he had these utterly huge eyes, like at least 50-60% bigger than real. It flattens out the eye sockets because more of the eyeball is hidden and the visible part has far less curvature, so both corners are far too much ahead on the face, flattening it out.
The problem is that it'd obviously look silly in a realistically shaded and lit movie, but as I scale the eyes down, the characteristics of the face change slightly...
And just for fun, we receive an ingame movie from the next project we're starting, and once again, utterly huge eyes. What's going on, guys? :)

[ienrdna]

vargatom: Could you show Digic-eye?

[vargatom]

I don't think so, but there's nothing special about them really.
We try to keep them at about 24-26mm diameter, and we also use the approach where the outer layer is only transparent above the iris - and completely opaque, but with SSS, everywhere else. This gives the eyes some depth, and then our compositors tweak the results using a bunch of layers and passes.

We've also used the Mental Ray shader that bevels edges in post, in max it's called round corners - it can also blend between separate materials and so it created the illusion of fluid where the eyeball and the eyelids are connected. Now with Arnold we use something else but I'd have to ask the lead shader coder but he's on vacation with his wife for a while ;)

[Infinite]

Thought this might be interesting for some:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyndall_effect

[tonytrout]

If I was a physicist :rofl: Could you replicate that effect on the iris using the maya MR paint shader with the reflective flakes for the colloid particles

[El Burritoh]

If you're into animating eyeballs, this might be interesting to you. Slow-mo footage of an eye in motion. Interesting to watch the iris jiggle toward the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySMtB5nWxPs&feature=player_embedded

[ZippZopp]

very cool vid!

[collings]

wow, yeah unexpected motion actually. Cool :)

[Intervain]

wow it's like jelly :)

[El Burritoh]

wow it's like jelly :)

Quite good on toast... :thumbsup:

[Infinite]

IT's ALIVE!!!! lol

Super cool video! Thanks allot for sharing.

[rasmusW]

eye pudding...
i did not know it was so wobbly.
thanks for sharing.

-r

[polyman]

Mental Ray....I used a transparency map to expose the iris.

http://i1120.photobucket.com/albums/l499/pixelbook/cg/wwiii.jpg

[Ketryillime]

I think eye laser surgery is safe.I never heard about side effects of eye surgery.

[GMO]

Hi guys, I think that this could be interesting regard this tread.
http://www.art-dept.com/artists/rankin/portfolio/specialprojects/eyescapes/portfolio.html


7926

I'm not sure about the terms of use of this gallery. But anyway it's really inspiring as references.

The artist is Rankin and he is a photographer.
This is the main site: http://www.art-dept.com/


bye!

[GMO]

I want to share with you two links that could be useful creating eyes, the first is a project of the photographer Suren Manvelyan titled "Your beautiful eyes":
http://www.behance.net/paronsuren/Frame/428809


this one is a great site of theatrical contact lenses:
http://www.9mmsfx.com/


;)

[tonytrout]

Thanks for links, I was particularly perturbed by the jaws contact lenses :)

[ahau]

the jaws lenses definitly made my day :D

[tonytrout]

Hi, I see a few artifacts from the geo on the cornea, I have tried a few geometries and see that a few other wireframes that have been posted here are also quite low res. Mental ray with subDapprox. Apart from increasing the mesh density am I missing something? Would a renderman type renderer prevent that? Any thoughts on mesh density?

8537
some test
8538
render geo
8542

[Lapaev]

use different topology

[tonytrout]

Cheers Lapaev, not sure exactly what you had in mind though; however tried this and it seems to work. I spun it on a turntable as I thought there might be some artifacts from the tri's but the bulge is far enough away from them to not be an issue, its axially circular.

8555

A very dirty render with just a shiney phong on the eyeball and no more highlight or reflection subdivision ripples.

8557

BTW I also rendered the problem geo with a reyes renderer, 3Delight 6 beta for free which is just out and I answered my own question.

8556

[phrenzy84]

I simply dont use polys for the outter eye. Its nurbs for me. The iris, sclera and pupil i model with polys > subdivs.

But take a look at some of the eyes earlier in this thread. They have done it with polys so it is by no means impossible. I can see in your previous post that all polys come down to one point connected by tris which is always gonna tessellate with creasing.

[Lapaev]

yes, i meant all quad topo for poly model

[Vimmy]

use a cube and subdivise it

[vargatom]

I'll try to screenshot the ones I use tomorrow... it really is quite simple, use as few radial divisions as possible (in our case 8) and when you make blendshapes and want to check how the eyelids touch it, add some turbosmooth or smooth mesh or whatever your app calls it.

[tonytrout]

Thanks guys for the answers, and I look forward to seeing your setup Tamas :)


5. the eyes are cross-eyed outwards, meaning looking at say mri shots from above you can see without a specific focus each eye is directed outwards
however, when look/talk to people they focus at us, meaning usually people eyes are focused on mid-close objects so they need to be cross-eyed towards not outwards..so how does that work with the natural eye location is outwards?

6. the eye in the eye socket and wrapped with the eye lids does not sit in the center, the iris/pupil seems to be in the center of the eyelids(from left to right) and looking straight the eyeball is exactly behind it centered. but it's not, the eye ball is actually cross-eyed outwards and down, the eyeball is sitting higher and inwards towards the nose so the iris/pupil is actually on the lower outwards off center of the eyeball(i mean the eyeball is rotated to that direction) . i found an old final fantasy wireframe done by..i forgot his name(great modeler).. showing this effect and i never noticed this before i did this research.

perhaps im crazy and eyes are straight but maybe some of these are correct? what do you guys think?

Gal, this interested me and I did some research too. It seems the optical axis of the eye (as defined by the cornea and lens) which is also the geometric axis is not necessarily aligned with the visual axis which is centered on the fovea at the back of the eyeball and the following article mentions an angle of 4-8degrees difference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovea_centralis

Its a bit more complicated than that though if you wade through the following article

http://research.opt.indiana.edu/Library/ModelOffAxisI/ModelOffAxisI.html

It appears that the pupil is slightly decentered which compensates somewhat for the apparent discrepency so these researchers suggest effectively an angle of 2degrees (ref chapter 3)

Obviously the eyes track to a fixation point at various distances so they will converge or diverge depending on that distance.

But yes, the eyes face slightly outward from their expected fixation point by a few degrees, but i have been inspecting the gaze of my family and if you can tell that by casual observation you observe better than me :)

[vargatom]

So here's an eyeball, I've painted over in blue to show the original basemesh which is quite low poly and takes just a little time to model. We usually prefer this version that has already been subdivided because it's more accurate for the animators.

[tonytrout]

Thats pretty cool Tamas, I will try it out. Cheers.

[vargatom]

Two more things
- the shape of the iris could use some work based on the anatomy images in this thread
- we use SSS, and a transparency map on the outer layer over the cornea to add some depth to the eye, raytraced shadows can handle this nicely (shadow maps not so much)

[Rox]

Thanks for the screenshot Tamas.
Could you elaborate about the raytraced shadows? Do you use extra lights for the eyes or does the global lighting for the scene light them? And, when you have for example a medium shot, do you use the same eyes setups as for the close-ups? Or maybe a simplified version without sss etc?

[ZippZopp]

here is my latest setup, which was used on my latest piece. it differs from my previous approach.

the outer layer has the corneal bulge and has a ramp controlling the transparency falloff which you can see in the lower right image. this gets the fast skin shader for SSS and that is plugged to an MIA additional color slot and the MIA then controls all the reflections. I did have some strange issues with the transparent edge not quite casting a nice enough occlusion and shadow onto the iris so I made a ring around the iris which was invisible to the render but cast a shadow and occlusion onto the iris. probably isn't physically accurate, but seemed to work for a still image. also, for my texture painting i painted a little bit of gray / blue into the transparent edge of the cornea to help merge it better with the transition into the iris

the iris is a torus primitive, squashed in, and indented. that also gets an SSS shader and then i place a flat plane behind it with a matte black material for the pupil. the caruncula also gets an SSS shader and i made sure its color matched into the red color around the eye so they would blend properly. finally, i have the transparent wet layer to form the connection between the eyeball and eye lid, as well as the caruncula and eyeball. i found making it a concave surface worked well. and here are the images along with a close up from my final render with these eyes. the eye setup image is 1600 pixels, so click it to get a larger view

http://zopfx.com/wips/eye_setup_02.jpg

http://zopfx.com/wips/middle_eye_eyes.jpg

[vargatom]

Zoppi's stuff is the coolest so far, I'd say ;) I've been thinking about adding extra geometry for shadows as well but the art dir has managed it with the shaders well enough so far.
We used the mental ray shader for edge blending on the eye shader to form the transparent fluid layer before we changed to Arnold, it also works well enough. I think in Max it's called Round Corners, sort of a post process fake bevel that can also work between different objects if you turn it on. Cool stuff for planar hard surface models like buildings, spaceships or guns as well!

As for the shadows, we don't use extra lights, it's just that we've abandoned PRMan because shadow maps were far too complicated for our workflow and schedules, and we moved to raytracing everything. Now we can use area lights, global illumination, SSS, we don't need to render ambient and reflection occlusion passes, set shadow map bias, pre-render and update shadow maps, or mess with point clouds and so on. It's okay for movie VFX but still a pain big enough for Sony to switch to Arnold.
So raytracing is also why transparency maps work with shadows, I think you'd need deep shadow maps otherwise.

[tonytrout]

:sw::sw:I agree but I still dont know how ZippZopp manages to get away with that high valence geo point on the cornea along with some of the other geos posted here, I guess it works OK at a distance?

[ZippZopp]

i do get some shading errors with that pole on the cornea. but for this it wasn't really noticeable. next time around I'll clean that up and do what tamas showed in his image so all those edges don't come to a point. it certainly would be much cleaner

[tonytrout]

Cheers Peter thanks for not giving me a slap on the earhole :) I have some trouble getting adequate shadow on the iris so I'm going to try the ring bit too:thumbsup:

[Bigguns]

hey ZippZopp your eyes look super! Would like to see it with different lighting, with stronger lights also, and with the eyes turned on the inner side a bit.

Nice set up, look a bit like those set up I had played around, except I don't have the iris cavity and not that torus for shadow, I can try that idea too, but I have also others in mind to test.

Here's my contribution, old set up, but still look cool, I tweaked the shaders of the skin, eyes, lacrymal liquid and gland and in Vray put all these at prepass 1, so everything is calculated in the same light map, it really help to blend things togheter. I'm doing a light animation, will be ready today, maybe I will upload it to see how it react.

A thing also, is, I think the iris don't have much reflection on it, because if you put reflection on it, when you lit the eyes with a flashlight type of lighthing, it's blasting the iris and get a wrong effet, I think it's more about caustic effet that get the highligh on the iris plus the shape of the iris.. anyway,more tests to do :)

the eyes is the more complicated area to do on a head, not just the eyes, but also the eyes socket, so everything blends togheter naturally.

I wait some more tests ZippZopp with other lighting :D

[Time2Time]

Hi guys.

This link could be useful.
http://but.mr-yesterday-met-ms-tomorrow.net/bmmm/?p=312

[GMO]

Thank you very much Time2Time! Very useful link.

Gian Mario

[Time2Time]

you are welcome )

[Spatz]

this is a great thread ... thanks!