Maybe you’ve seen them before… the little robots at the top of my site: http://www.macouno.com I made them ages ago, for an animation, but nothing ever came of it. I decided they do indeed deserve to be used for something more than just a site layout.
So… I’m rebuilding them with all the things I’ve learnt since I did them the first time (it was a couple years ago).
But I’d like some advice on a few things
So here’s my first issue…
See the eyes? They’re basicly an hourglass shape on it’s side. I used a lattice to shape them a bit more (mould them to the head shape). The big issue is… what to do about irisses? Now I used 2 negative spots that project the iris on the “eyeball”. Normally I’d just assign two materials to a single uvsphere, but that won’t work here. Not with this strange shape.
I think the major thing is that in the regular 3d view you don’t see the irisses now… which is a bit of a pain. Just to be clear, the ideal solution would involve one mesh with two materials…
Heh thanks, but you know how it is… you progress, and you want your models to as well, there’s a ton of flaws and plain wrongness in the old ones. Plus I really don’t like their eyebrows! hehe
I’ve been talking to some people in the chat channels as well, and still haven’t been able to come up with the right method.
Textures would work, but wouldn’t be visible in non textured view, which means its no better than what I have now. Someone suggested using fake irisses just for the 3d view, but I’d rather keep things clean. Another idea is to use lots and lots of shape keys, but the problem with that is that they are implemented linear, so it’s hard to make irisses “flow over a spherical surface”.
I’m still hoping someone has an idea I haven’t come up with yet.
vitaliy: as I said above: because you can’t see a uvmap in your 3d view in non textured view. It is rather odd to work on your model without irisses… that’s the main reason for wanting a different solution than what I have now… there’s no advantage to what you suggest really.
I think the only thing you can do with this shape is add two seperate, shadless spheres or circular planes and parent them to the lattice and then use the bone to animate them.
hmm well… I don’t see how that would work cleanly… and I would like some toonshading on the eyeballs… the problem with using spheres is the “what happens with the iris when the eye rotates to the sides”
Here is one idea:
You could assign 2 materials, separated at the middle of the hourglass for the white. Use a white image with a black circle. set the image texture to extend and use an empty for the mapping instead of orco.
But thats not very different from your Spotlight-approach.
I made a simple iris in 3d-view with a totally transparent material, so it won’t render. If you want to have it more precise, Model a flat slightly protruding iris, that is transformed by the lattice as well (then you’d have to shape the eyes entirely by the lattice).
A second attempt is to use circular eyeballs with two materials for animation, which are synchronised with the hourglass (Trackto-constraints or something like that). when it comes to rendering, you disable the animlayer with the balls and render the hourglass-visor.
AquaticPenguin: I know, but that will come later, it’s a wip after all
Haunt_House: Yeah I see what you did there, but you’re right, it’s not a big step up from what I have now. Thanks for showing it in a file as well, that really makes it very clear. Actually I think it shouldn’t be a problem to do that with just one material as well.
one material, but two empties controlling it? if that’s possible (because of nodes or something), I want to know how!
I mean, if it’s just looking up or down, but you might want him to focus nearby things and then he needs the ability to be crosseyed.
I thought about using the lattice approach, but I think it might get too distorted on the outsides (the iris would deform too much when held on the white surface).
