I spent all of yesterday making a detailed tutorial for making some rather nice eyes in blender… and being its my first tut any ANYTHING… id like everyones opinion on it here before i started having it posted in the main blander pages and other CG rendering websites.
http://www.deviantart.com/view/10029619/
ANY comment and idea will be appreciated… including layout… needed info or bad grammar.
and any questions that you can think of that might arise… it will alow me to add a FAQ possibly.
You should not write tutorials unless you know what you are talking about.
Once we have our starting point we “add” [space bar] a “Mesh UV Sphere” and set its rings and colums to max settings [100x100] and press ok to make our eye
Please learn to use Blender and stop confusing other beginners! Don’t post this on other cg related websites.
I have seen beginners spamming these forums, and I have said (nearly) nothing, but I draw the line here. [/quote]
Unfortunately 100x100 verts is really excessive. You could have got the same result by using 16x16 and using subsurf.
check out this great eye tutorial:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Tutorials.243.0.html#806
Yeah, I would have to agree. When I first so this post I was about to respond, but decided to be nice and keep my mouth shut. But really. This eye should be called “my first attempt” not a tutorial that others are supposed to learn from. Sorry. While your intentions of contributing to the community are good and commendable - if your tutorial doesn’t provide best practices and result in a high quality render - you are actually hurting the community.
Don’t want to sound like a brick (tough I know that can’t be avoided) but your tutorial needs this tuorial:
http://blenderchar.weirdhat.com/eyetute/
It does same thing as your tutorial, but uses lot less verts and looks, well, lot better.
yes… 100x100 IS alot of verts… and it CLEARLY states that in the tutorial… further down it ALSO states… to cut back on all the useles verts… to cut the eye in half and quartes as 90% of the eye isent even seen.
it ALSO “explains” that the more pixels you have when selecting a curcle… the rounder it is… with a setting of just 16… when you select the cornea youll only be selecting about 10 pixels and it gives the edge and overly blocky shape and appearance. Overall it saves on countelss subdivisions and pinpointing verts… and you still end up with about the same amount of verts in the end.
What if later on you decided you wanted to animate your model? If you have deleted all the “useless verts” that aren’t seen - when you go to rotate your eye - uh oh - it’s not an eye - it’s a contact! 
Hmm. That doesn’t make much sense to me. Why would I want lots of verts while editing, which would bog things down, when I can achieve the same result using subd at render time?
Wow! This thread has made it onto DragonFyre’s DeviantArt page!
You are very excitable aren’t you?
Don’t get so upset about it. Really. Nobody hates you. Well, actually I’m sure some people do - but likely not anyone here. Like you said, you have been using blender for one week, right? You can’t exactly expect others to view you as a guru when you are a beginner, can you?
It’s cool that you made a tut - keep it up! But after one week you can’t expect people that have been using the program for years to be overly impressed. Check out the other tut that was mentioned. After looking it over I think you should better understand why not everyone was so excited about yours.
i NEVER expected to be seen as a guru… and it was because of a “forum” guru asking the “technique” i used to make that i that i even made it… not to mention other friends that are wanting to get into blender… im a noob… and i have admitted that countless times…
but you know what… blender was made by 30 different people in different spots… theres not a SINGLE person that knows EVERYTHING about it… we are ALL learning on a daily basis no matter what our skill level… so what if ive been in blender a week… we all have room for improvement… we all have our own techniques… and so WHAT if there are different ways for doing things… people just starting out arent going to know anything… and thats what my tutorial is for… those that just dont know.
as for all the “advanced” features… well… its not an “advanced” tutorial… and by the time they come around to animating… they will have enough basic knowledge to make something as simple as eyes on thier own.
on that i leave with 2 more points to my tut… lately in blender general… a fer og the forum vets have been talking about true 3 point triangles causing deformities and rendering problems to organic surfaces and they are to be avoided at all problems… well using subdivide and boolean differences cause a large amount of said triangles… thus all the more reason to start with a high vert count to begin with…
secondly… as for the animating aspect… if you need more then half an eye to animate… then your doing something wrong… because NOBODY can show the back of thier eyes in true life.
nobodys work and tuts are perfect… but mine poffers a decent start for those that dont know anything about blender.
as for being overly excited over it al… critisizm is fine… being told by everyone thats posting that my effort to try to help people is total shit is just a lil upsetting.
DragonFyre, at the age of 26 I expect you take critics, even when they are not packed in candy. I admit you had to take my full load, and it was grown by other people than you.
Don’t take it personal. I have no doubt your intention was good, but you can’t write a beginner tut when you’re a beginner yourself. That doesn’t help.
Use your energy to get to a certain level, and I am sure you will agree with me that the current tutorial is not good.
ALL comments i got o the tutorial at the blender forums were in absolute hatred… and i mean absolute
I said your tutorial is bad. That is not to be taken personal. I only go this far when I see that others are ‘harmed’. I usually don’t call artwork ‘bad’ in the artists face. Please accept that your work contains mistakes I can’t accept. No hatred in this.
This isn’t just lately, people have talked about that ever since Blender started using Catmull-Clarke subdivision. You have only an elementary understanding of it, so why are you arguing? The reason you shouldn’t use triangles is because the formula that creates the subdivisions does weird things with triangles. It works better with squares. The fact that it creates triangles means nothing (and a square is indeed made of two triangles), it’s the way the formula works with the un-subdivided surface that creates a problem.
I think you’ll change your mind if/when you actually try to animate it…
Well, no… when people get disinformation right from the beginning (like 100x100 spheres) it’s bad for their future.
Read my signature. No one used the word shit, people offered you their genuine criticism. It is true that there are better eye tutorials and lots of them, so it’s a bad idea to saturate the web with inferior tuts. If you look at the final results, even you should admit that yours is inferior. This isn’t bad, you’ll get better, but should you be spreading that tutorial when you know that other people made better ones? Wouldn’t that be nearly purposely holding people back from creating better works?
You are taking this whole thing a bit too seriously. We all just pointed out, that there already is a tutorial making eyes, which is rather effective.
The other point people vere saying, and this is true, your eyes vert count is pretty high. You can do same job with lot less verts, and that is important thing to teach noobs. No need to construct needlesly high poly objects if they are not needed.
And for further notice, there is no real need to use booleans to make eyes. Franly I hardly never use them, as you yourself said, they are messy.
But anyway, keep on blending. As you develop your skills you’l notice, that most poinst said here are true. And no-one said you should not post your work. I say post, and ask crits and advises. That is the only way to learn.
I think you need to shill out a little. You asked for peoples opinions, and that’s what you got. Don’t like them? Oh well.
That’s not particularly true but it’s a secondary point. Lets not go down that road.
using subdivide and boolean differences cause a large amount of said triangles… thus all the more reason to start with a high vert count to begin with…
Booleans, yes, Subdivide, only when needed. And moreover, you should use SubSurf, not subdivide (which would be the same as adding a high poly mesh in the first place).
Orientation wise, you also made a rather bad decision. By putting the UV sphere in the axis of the eyes (rings going from front to back) it is much easier to cut a nice iris than by using the method you suggest which give dented polygons all around the region.
Also, I really suggest you use ZTransp instead of RayTransp in this case. Especially since you didn’t set an IOR. Refraction would only be needed if you had EXTREME closeup on the eyes.
as for being overly excited over it al… critisizm is fine… being told by everyone thats posting that my effort to try to help people is total shit is just a lil upsetting.
You seem to be upsetable really easily. Nobody here said it was total shit.
While making tutorials is something everyone should be thankful for, having other users review you them before announcing them as finished is a good way to insure quality of both techniques and presentation.
A circle can be made to be a bit rounder if you use subsurf and look much rounder with set smooth on. You have a UV sphere at the max settings and that’s a huge waste of poly’s and memory. You want things as low poly as you can get while still looking good to optimize speed and rendering time.
i already said i wasent polsting it at any of the 3-d sotes… i submit… i give in… its a bad tutorial…
as for the critisizim… yes… it HAS upset me… as id did ask for it… but i ALSO asked that if i DID do wrong… to explain and do what you could to make IT and ANY other tut i don in the future “better” . all i got was a load of “you shouldnet post this thing anywhere”
But whatever… its gone. im deleting it to make everyone happy and to prevent toe coruption of further generations.
PS… my tut might have been overly flawwed in its directions… but at least you could understand them unlike most tuts ive seen.
And the intent of it all was good… and no matter what any of you say… to me that makes me happy that i at least tried.
thank you for your thoughts and opinions.
PSS… my journals were NOT menat to be posted here >.<
You’re overreacting. No one wants you to just give up.
Check out the tutorials at blender3d.org - here.
They’re not bad at all, mostly easy to understand, and they’ll help you get along well. After going through some of those you’ll get a better grasp of Blender and not make mistakes like 100x100 UVspheres.
If it helps any, I did something similar when I was first learning to construct 3d game models. Looking back on what I documented, it was laughable, and anyone who knew 3d games would have done just that.
i am FAR from giving up… hurt yes… but you know… thats my own stupidity.
Everyone here is right… and i guess the thing that got me the most was that i somehow deep down knew they were right and that i had screwed up again when i was so set on trying to do good. eh… such is life.
Each day is a lesson and its only wasted if you refuse to learn from whats been taught to you.
I truly thank you all for cracking me up side the head and waking me up.
and as i said… im FAR from giving up.
<counselor hat>
No offense dude, but you need to change your attitude. Your perspective on life can make all the difference, and your perspective seems a bit negative, angry, self-deprecating, etc…
You didn’t screw up. Not being perfect isn’t screwing up. Not knowing how to do things just right from the very start isn’t screwing up. It’s normal.
If you can learn the trick of not taking yourself too seriously, you will be much happier.
</counselor hat>
Welcome to the forum and the community. It’s generally a friendly place. I think most appreciate honesty here, so be forewarned that not everyone will always be like “You are great”, “Wow, that’s cool dude”, etc…
You are going to get the occassional “what were you thinking”!
Blender’s a good tool, and Elysiun is a good place to be. Glad to have you here, as you obviously are someone who wants to contribute.
Ouch! [!] ! It must be ‘pile on dragon fyre’ day. Sorry you got hurt. I really haven’t seen that happen here MUCH before. Really, there’s a lot of friendly help around, even nico. Glad it was you and not me BTW 
Try working on it in the “works in progress forum”. Same people there but with a kinder gentler mask on. Anyway, you have received some goof crits and you should take them and rewrite the tute with that information included. Post the URl there and you’ll get slam dunked again with some more good info;) By the time your done you’ll have a hide as thick as a rhinoceros and skills to boot. On top of that you’ll probably cut the next guy some slack because of what you’ve been through.
yes… well reduing the tut is last on my mind considering the high vert count at the begining was the basis of the second 1.4 of the tut so that means the first 1/2 is trash… the only comments i got that could be considered regarding the end half was someone said that the other tuts out there thier end result looked alot better as well so like they said… its only going to do more damage then good and id be wrong to let it remain in circulation… so i deleted the files last night.
Ive gone back to my lil personal projects like a good lil noob 