Software:
Maya (also applied to Max, Lightwave and other, since they possess good polygonal
modelling tools)
I'm
posting a very simple tutorial on how to model and apply shaders to get realistic
eyes, the "windows of your character's soul". A lot of times, bad eyes
can "kill" your character literally, even if it has the most perfect
modeling of the world. The importance of the eyes is exactly this: give life to
your character. Therefore, don't underestimate this very important step of CG
character construction... if not, you've only created "puppets" :)
There
is a quite big camber in the cornea, in the iris area. That irregularity, that
all of us have, can become a great problem for a CG character. When rotating the
eye, this area unfortunately would invade the eyelids faces, causing strange results.
For that reason, I decreased this camber to avoid a probable future problem.
1.
Create a sphere with few segments (in this case, 8):
2.
If you prefer, delete the half and use a NURMS/Symmetry (MAX) or CPS Script (MAYA):
3.
Here, we see the approximate size proportion of the iris in relation to the eye.
It occupies an area a little larger than 2/4 of the height but not 1/3. Create
2 new loops according to the indications in red, exactly where the iris borders
will be:
4.
Here, the perspective view, after a small polygon "relax":
5.
Model the small camber until getting a close result of this (side view):
6.
We will transform the extremity triangles...
7.
...in quads, cutting the mesh this way:
8.
SubD wire version...
9.
...shade mode. Observe that the camber is minimum, different than it happens in
the real eye:
10.
Here are the initial proportions maintained after the completion of the first
part, the cornea:
