Compound eye of a fly.

em21701 · March 13, 2010, 4:08am

I am pretty new to blender and I am trying to make a compound eye for a fly. I think I have a reasonable first attempt but would like to improve on it. I textured a sphere with a bump pattern on the UV in Gimp, added a color ramp material on the normal and a white material with a little shine for a finish. I have a lot to learn about materials and texturing.

flyEye.blend (285 KB)

Reference image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Musca_domestica_Portrait.jpg

Thanks in advance,
Eric

seanser · March 15, 2010, 2:10pm

Looks pretty successful to me, nice material.

em21701 · March 15, 2010, 6:11pm

Thank you!

UglyMike · March 17, 2010, 1:49am

Yes, nice material. Looks quite a bit like the real thing.
Your facettes however seem to be square. Are they? 'cause insect eyes have hexagonal facettes (can be seen in the full resolution version of your ref image…)

em21701 · March 17, 2010, 3:45am

The bumps are hemispheres, I hadn’t noticed hexagonal shapes, I’ll study the reference a little deeper. Thanks!

em21701 · March 23, 2010, 2:25pm

Per UglyMike I made hex shaped projections and tweaked the colors. I learned how to create patterns in gimp so the whole process got a lot easier and better looking.