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View Full Version : Help with Irregular Eyes.

Dave-Mastor
01-10-2008, 07:59 PM
I mistakingly posted this in the worng forum... so here goes try two!

I have come here seeking help with a particular problem that I've been having.

Recently, I've been working on a character model, and it's pretty much my first time doing a character of any type. I've had a bit of experience with weapons and vehicles. I'm moderately good at getting Mesh-smoothing to work without artifacts or lumps, so the head looks fairly smooth(Where it should be.) at 3 Iterations and above.

The problem I've been having is with the eyes. They aren't completely humanoid looking, or rather, the standard sphere/egg shape won't work. The eyes are the shape of an arch, with the bottom being flat, and the top a half circle. Here are some pictures: Front (http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s152/Dave-Mastor/EyeFront.jpg), Left (http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s152/Dave-Mastor/EyeLeft.jpg), and Perspective (http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s152/Dave-Mastor/EyePerspective.jpg). Don't worry about the rest of the head, it's just hidden. Also bear with me, this is(Mostly) how the character looks, and it's my first attempt... so laugh all you want. :D

I don't plan on having any lower eyelids, but there will be upper ones, so that will make the top of the eye, at least the visible part, a little more flat that circular.

I've never done eyes before, so I don't have any idea where to start. The regular eye tutorials don't really apply in this case.

What I was trying to do was take the outer edges of the eye-socket, detach as clone, move them back a bit, scale to be slightly larger, and then use insets(Then pull out) or beveling... but it always turned out fairly lumpy, even after quite a bit of tweaking.

Another problem is, the eyes are quite large on the character, so they can't be bulging out of the head very much, and they need to be animate-able, either by texture, mesh-deforming, or actual rotation.

This is one of the last things to do before the head is done, but I can't seem to get an eye mesh that works, or looks good.

I would be very grateful if someone could help me, as I'm completely lost!
Thanks,
Dave
Sagadur
01-11-2008, 05:17 PM
Hello Dave,

You posted the same picture twice (perspective is the same as left). But since the two remaining pictures produce enough information, that is no real problem.

First: most professional character-designers (I don't consider myself one) say, that it's better to model a more realistic character first, to learn about anatomy, so a bit of study might be helpful with your rather stylized character.

Now to seriously to your problems (I hope I understood you correctly and don't answer with sugestions which are far from helpful):
The outline of your eyes is simply flat, so that no sphere or spherelike form will fit in that head while conforming to those outlines. But if you drag the upper and the outer edges a bit back, a small part of a sphere with a large radius might suffice. Then you could move that part to animate your eyes. Or you even might use totally flat "eyballs" which would look extremly comic- or mangalike (but it seems, that this is your goal).

So as your eyes are now very unrealistic (and are intended to be so), your "eyballs" will have to follow and be unrealistic too.
Personally I would envourage you to round the outline a bit more out to adapt them better to spherical eyes. Thus the silhouette of the eyeholes, seen from the side would be lost (the front view could retain it's shape with no great effort).
Neuropolis
01-23-2008, 05:34 AM
I always put an FFD box spacewarp around the eye and spacewarp-bind the eye to the box. Then modify the box until the eye fits in the irregular-sized eye socket. :) This should fix all your animation problems, as the eye is still a sphere and will act accordingly when you rotate it, but the FFD makes sure the eye retains its shape.
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01-23-2008, 05:34 AM
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