Hey Everyone! I’ve been working on trying to create realistic eyes in Blender and this is the result so far. I wanted to see how much could be done in blender, so everything from the textures to the model were created 100% in Blender. Only thing not made in Blender was the HDR I used to light the scene. Please give me some feedback on how I should improve this, and if you would like to see a tutorial on how I achieved this scene, please let me know so that I can start working on one. 
Some thinks that could be improved:
- The end of the veins should get thinner and smaller
- The Iris pattern looks weird
- The outer rim of the iris should fade back to black
Look at a lot of reference!
Keep it up!
Thank you very much for the advice!
I understand that the veins should get thinner and smaller towards the end and the outer rim of the iris should fade to black, but I don’t understand why you say the iris pattern looks weird. I have looked at many reference photos and there are so many random patterns in the eye. Could you please elaborate on how I would improve the iris pattern.
This is one I did and it does look semi realistic yet I am not completely happy with it but maybe it will give you some idea of what bert vdb is talking about.
Hi.
To be all procedural is pretty good!. How did you make the iris?
In case you are not looking to get it all procedural, and in case you do not know this excellent tutorial (textures included in the description):
That is actually the tutorial I use to create mine.
I created the iris texture procedural in my latest wip here: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?436610-Pixar-esque-portret
I followed this tutorial by David Ward and converted the coloring part to cycles:
Hope this helps you in any way!
This texture was detailed enough for my Pixar style purpose, but you might modify it until you achieve your desired amount of detail!
Thank you everybody for the advice! Here is my latest test. I made sure the iris faded to black, and I also worked more on the veins. What do you think?
Thank you for sharing the tutorial. However I was looking to see if I could create the realistic textures in Blender itself. The iris was made with a noise texture projected onto a circle using its UV coordinates, and by distorting the circle I got the texture I wanted. Finally in the compositor I was able to add the color I wanted and mask out the pupil.
Thank you so much! I plan to use this one soon!
nice work. perhaps add some displacement to the overall shape… its not so perfectly smooth and even.
Thanks for the suggestion!