what is the best way to make eyes? And please give me a good explination of how to do it, because I am VERY new to blender.
Ok, very new to Blender: try this tutorial <-- that’s a link, btw. You’ll need to know some basics about navigating around Blender, and modeling, and material shaders. But you can find that stuff in the wiki, too. If you meant cartoon eyes, there’s some ideas about using lattices in the wiki under Animation>>Lattice deformer. If you get stuck working through either (they’re not exactly noob tutorials, but creating really good eyes isn’t exactly a noob project) give us a holler here and someone will help you get unstuck.
Ok thanks. I will take a look at this. I am not THAT new, I know the basic navagation and things. But the eyes I am trying to make are not human eyes. They are for a penguin, so I guess you could say cartoon-ish. The penguin is not supposed to look real.
Then you’ll want to look at the Lattice Deformer tutorial, it mentions eyes a bit, all the way at the bottom. I think weirdhat used to have a cartoon eye tut using lattices, but he seems to have moved some of his stuff to the wiki and shut down his tutorial site. The eye they use in the Lattice deformer is just a UV sphere, with two material indices, one for the main eyeball, the other for the iris/pupil. The lattice deformer stretches it out into the cartoon shape, and lets you rotate the sphere so the eye can look around without falling out of the penguin’s head.
I looked at the first tutorial you posted, and I dont really know how to make these shapes since I am new. I dont know how to make a sphere with a hole in it, or the Iris, or are they are just made by extrudeing edges.
The sphere is a primitive (on the add menu as UV sphere). To make a hole in the sphere select vertices and delete them (x). What I normally do before I delete the vertices, is duplicate them once (Shift D) to make the iris, cornea and pupil. To move the duplicate out along the axis (I’ll assume it’s the x axis) type g x. This “grabs” the vertices so you can move them, x constrains the motion to the x axis. I do all the moving around using this technique, to keep everything lined up so its easy to reassemble later.
Tweak the cornea by hand to make it bulge out a little more. Then duplicate it and mirror it to make the iris. (same bulge, turned inward.) Then duplicate it again and flatten the duplicate to make the pupil (scale along an axis, numerical input zero: s x 0 (again, assuming everything is spread out along the x axis)). Before you put everything back together, apply your materials: it’s easier to select the pupil, say, when it’s outside the eyeball than when it’s back inside.
Once you have the materials added to the mesh pieces, do the constrained move again to move them back into place. You get finer control over moves by pressing Shift as you move your mouse. You will probably also want to zoom in to make sure everything lines up.
Anything you don’t know how to do in the above, google the unfamiliar operation with “Blender 3D” added to your search term and you should get a reference to the Blender wiki page or the reference page that explains the operation.
Sigh… I selected vertices then deleted them, but then it just looks like a rectangle cut out of a sphere. How do I make them circular? And out of curiosity, how do YOU select vertices to work with? I press B then just click and drag over the vertices that I want. Is there a better way?
Three ways to select stuff:
type b once, you get box select. Drag the box around what you want to select. Repeat to add to your selection.
type b twice, you get circle select. Anything inside the circle is selected when you LMB click (this is actually “brush” select, you can drag it across vertices to select them) RMB click turns the circle off, otherwise you can just keep adding to your selection by LMB clicking on more stuff. Mouse wheel adjusts the size of the circle.
RMB click and Shift RMB click. The first selects a single vertex (which ever the cursor is on or close to) AND deselects any previously selected vertices, holding shift while you click will add additional vertices to your selection (or subtract them, if they are already selected.) Shift RMB is good for fine tuning box or circle selections, if you need to add or remove a few vertices from your selection. It can be hard to control sometimes if the mesh is very dense.
Which do I use? Mostly box select and Shift RMB click. However, for something like this, where I’m trying to get a circular arrangement, I’d use circle select. The UV sphere has two poles, where the segments come together and the rings get smaller, this is the part I’d cut out and use for the hole in the eye, since it’s already round.
NOTE: when you delete vertices, you also delete any edges or faces attached to the vertices, but when you duplicate, you only duplicate edges and faces that are complete. So, if you duplicate the center vertex and two rings of vertices for the iris/cornea/pupil, you only delete the center vertex and ONE ring of vertices. Otherwise your hole will be larger than the duplicated part you’re going to fit back into the hole.
Hmm. I have all of the shaped but the pupil, which I thought was going to be the easiest. But how do I make the inside of the circle black? I make the circle but it is empty.So how do I do this?
I was trying to figure this out for myself and I got it to work via fill.(shift-F). and then when I went to make it black, it makes all everything black, because I guess that since I made all of the other shapes from duplicating sections of the origional sphere, they are all one mesh. So is there a way that I can make it so that they are seperate shapes?
Yes, they are all one mesh, which is not a problem, since you can have up to 16 materials on one mesh. Check out “material index” or “material indices” or search for a tutorial about “multiple materials on single mesh.”
I have seen a tut, and have had help on the chat in the community section, but I still just cant figure it out. Sigh.
Ok, I have all of the materials set to the correct shapes, but I cant get it too look right.
The Cornea(when rendered)isnt transparent like it is supposed to be. It is in the materials preview.
And the Iris isnt at all correct.
So if you could, please look at the .blend file.
here is the link:
http://www.savefile.com/files/332284
The model that the eyes are for is also in this blend, so tell me what you think of it, and anything I could improve on. Keep in mind that he is my very firs model, so be merciful.
Your help is GREATLY appreciated.