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Jonathan Lyons
10-09-2006, 07:32 PM
I have a character with spherical, muppet like eyeballs. Rather common.

How do I avoid dark shadows on the underside of the eyes. I tried turning off casting and receiving shadows for the geometry, but that didn't work.

I'm working in Maya 6.5, rendering in Mental Ray.

Any suggestions?
neuromancer1978
10-10-2006, 09:03 AM
Add a higher Ambience setting, that should work.
CaptainObvious
10-10-2006, 11:04 AM
Add more lights. Turning off shadows doesn't help because the dark side of the eyes are not, in 3D rendering terms, in a shadow. They're dark because the surface normal is pointing away from the light. If you have a surface whose normal is pointing directly at a light, it will be bright. As the normal approaches a 90° angle to the light, it grows darker. When it's pointing away from the light, it will not get any illumination at all from that light.

Three point light rigs may be a tad too common for my liking, but they're easy to grasp and look a lot better than just a single light rig. Try that.
Jonathan Lyons
10-10-2006, 05:30 PM
Thanks for the technical information Captain Obvious.
mihkeltt
10-14-2006, 05:29 PM
add GI (global illumination). i'm not familiar with maya but i guess there it's called final gather or smth.
CaptainObvious
10-15-2006, 12:35 AM
add GI (global illumination). i'm not familiar with maya but i guess there it's called final gather or smth.
I'm as big a fan of GI as anybody, but if the answer to lighting problems is never just turn on GI.
ThirdEye
10-15-2006, 10:30 AM
The reason why in real life you don't see hard shadows on eyes is everything gets scattered under the surface by a sort of SSS effect.
Several people now go for SSS on eyeballsit gives a more natural result and avoids razor sharp shadows.
CaptainObvious
10-15-2006, 11:36 AM
No need for lighting or texturing anymore! Just add GI and SSS and let the computer do the work! ;)
Jonathan Lyons
10-16-2006, 06:03 PM
I am going for a bright, cartoony lighting.

What I've done is create an ambient light that is parented under the head node, so it always stays directly in front of the eyes. the eye shader is exclusively linked to this ambient light.

Since a little shading is nice looking, I can put just the right amount of ambient shade on the eyes. It's basic, with good control and doesn't add the rendering cost of GI.

Thanks all for your suggestions.
CaptainObvious
10-17-2006, 01:33 PM
Care to show it?
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