I work for an ophthalmology office and I recently started working on a fairly detailed model of an eye for use in some futuyre educational materials. I decided to do a large render and place for my wallpaper. It was kinda nice, but a bit plain. It was also a bit surreal (as any eye apparently floating in space should be ) . I took the image into GiMP 2.0 to darken the background, add some noise, and add some text. Voila…homage to Orwell
Anyway, this was the first time I used the text tool in the new GiMP. It’s a big improvement over the old one.
I plan on adding some iris textures soon, but this render was when I was just finished with the model itself.
I’m trying to figure out how to go about doing the iris texture. I could probably draw it up in the Gimp or Sodipodi (or even Blender - for that 3d effect), or I could probably even take one from an iris photo, since I have access to those where I work There is a possibility that the eye may be used in some animations, where I will have to have the iris dilate and/or contract, so I am trying to figure out how to get an iris texture to move/scale accordingly. Since these will be animations of eye surgery, I’m thinking the texture will have to show some movement, otherwise it might not look that realistic. OTOH, an eyeball floating in space isn’t all that realisitic either. Just something to be worked out.
As far as lighting goes, I agree that the centered light isn’t great, but it was good while I was modelling the eye. This is just a quick render of the eye. I actually have two other meshes that make up part of the eye, but everyime I tried to render them, I had some odd rendering artifacts that I couldn’t get rid of.
) . I took the image into GiMP 2.0 to darken the background, add some noise, and add some text. Voila…homage to Orwell 
There is a possibility that the eye may be used in some animations, where I will have to have the iris dilate and/or contract, so I am trying to figure out how to get an iris texture to move/scale accordingly. Since these will be animations of eye surgery, I’m thinking the texture will have to show some movement, otherwise it might not look that realistic. OTOH, an eyeball floating in space isn’t all that realisitic either. Just something to be worked out.