I'm James Taylor, and today we're going to look at modeling and texturing very
simple eyeballs in Maya. I'm starting with a regular polygon sphere
in my creation parameters I want to adjust my subdivisions from twenty
up to 48 and then I'll rotate it along its
x-axis just a ninety degree rotation
and I'm gonna duplicate it next - so, just CTRL+D to duplicate it
then I'll scale that duplicate down by half
and this duplicate is going to give us a reference for this size of our iris
I zoom in so I can see that duplicate inside the original
and I'll select a bunch of faces along the front of
my object, so that they are about the same size as the duplicate. We can see
that gives us a proper sized
iris on the front of the eyeball. Now before I go further I have to adjust some
settings on my scale tools. I'll double-click the scale tool,
and then I want to find this 'Prevent Negative Scale' and turn that off
and then I adjust my pivot point, and basically scale those
iris faces backwards into the eyeball
we're left with this disc shape on the front of our eyeball
and one problem that we'll have, is a very sharp edge between the
eyeball and the iris
so I select that edge and use my Bevel Edge tool
to soften it, to create more of a rounded transition between the eyeball
and iris area. Next I'm gonna turn my attention to creating a pupil
I grab the vert in the very center and pull it back
and also pull some other edge rows around it backwards, as well, to create
more of a smooth
divot. And just like I did for the edges of the iris,
I select one of the outer rings of the pupil area and I'll bevel that
to can create a nice smooth transition. I should be left with a shape that looks like this
I've got a disc carved out of the eyeball, that's my iris
I've got a pupil in there - so I'm gonna assign a new material to this and I'll use a blinn
and I'll set it to a white color - but I don't want to choose
100 percent white - I want a
little pink to it. So that's the material for the sclera (the white part of the eye)
now I want to do the iris - an easy way to select it is to grab that vert
in the center, and then use our Grow Selection,
to grow right out to the edges of that bevel that we created
and I will assign a new blinn to it, and I'll just darken it a little,
so that we can see, very clearly, the transition between
the sclera and the colored iris inside
Now, with the same faces selected, I open up my UV Editor
UV Editor. We see that we have just the regular default sphere UVs
I need to Planar Map the iris
so: hold SHIFT+RMB and choose Planar Map. Then I'll just move the rest of the
UVs for the eyeball
out of the way. We need this UV layout for the next step, which is
material creation
I select the material for the iris, and in the color channel,
I plug in a Ramp. And I just need to
change that ramp's type to a Circular Ramp, so I get a nice gradient
I set my outer color to be the same color as the sclera - so, that slightly
pink color. Then I adjust the position of the pins so they sit right at the
edge of that iris area, so I get a nice smooth blend
Now I want to define the colors of the eye
I add a blue pin in here, and that'll be the base color
and I never want to go too saturated with the colors of the eye - they are natural colors
so we're always a bit desaturated and subdued
now, the outermost color is going to be
pretty dark, it represents a shadow where the sclera
overlaps the iris of the eye. And next to that, I add a brighter version of
whatever color I've chosen - so brighter blue
and then I add another bright blue color
in the center of the eye - so around the dark part the pupil,
we get a much much brighter color, and so the overall effect is that I have the
dark pupil in the center,
a bright color right around that, and then it fades out to the
dark ring around the
edge of the iris. And I want things shiny: so I'll lower the eccentricity
on my blinn - and I'll turn the Specular Roll Off all the way up
and now I'm getting a nice shiny highlight. And this highlight is essential for making the eyeball
look alive and interesting. Looking at it, I want to have a bigger pupil, so I just
grab the faces in the center and I turn my Soft Mod on - just hit the 'b' key
and I scale it up - and the bigger pupil just looks a little more proportional
okay, now let's add a cornea: the transparent shell around the outside of the eye
I start by building the same size sphere with the same number of
subdivisions. The difference here, is the front of my cornea
object is going to come out. So I grab the vert
that's at the pole of the eyeball there, and then turn my Soft Modification on, and just
pull it a little bit forward
and that gives us that little bit of a lens that we need
on the front of the eyeball. I'll grab a few Edge Rings and just scale them down to create
a bit more of a lens effect, popping out away from the overall sphere of the eyeball
and now I will assign a new Blinn material to it
and I'll up the transparency to 100 percent
Next, I crank up my Specular Roll Off and Specular Color to the maximum values
and I dial down the Eccentricity a little bit, and this will give me a
transparent, shiny sphere that surrounds the eyeball
and now I've got two sets of specular highlights: the one on the iris, and the one on the cornea
and this will also help the eyeball feel alive, and it will interact with
the lights in the environment much more nicely. Okay lets add a little bit more
color to the sclera (the white part of the eye)
I'm gonna put a ramp on that, and I will ramp from
the color that we've already established for the sclera, to
a much more pink/red color at the back of the eyeball
and so this means that as the eyeball turns and rotates,
it'll look just a little bit more bloodshot, and feel like a little bit
more like natural tissue
without looking very exaggerated or overdone
and at this point, we've got a really basic eye that we could use
but if we want to step it up another level, we need to add
textures. So I open my UV Editor again, and select the faces of the iris
and then I'll go into the Polygons menu, and choose UV Snapshot
and I'll choose a relatively high resolution, and I'll save this image out
and I'll use this as a basis for painting in my paint program
here, I will use Photoshop, and when we switch over, we'll see the image that was
saved out is basically just a screenshot of our UVs. Now we can draw on top of that
to create our texture
first thing I do is create a new layer, filled with grey, and use that as
an overlay layer
and now I'll start painting. I need to use pressure sensitive brushes
in Photoshop, this means that Shape Dynamics is turned on. We can check that
in our brush properties. If we turn it off,
we see that we don't get nice tapered strokes, and we want that taper on the ends of our brush,
it'll make things look a little bit more natural. So I'll use a black paint brush
and I'll start sketching in lines
and in general I try to do curved lines
so big U-shapes, or big circular shapes
I'll vary the sizes, so some will be very big, some will be very small
and I basically do half the eyeball area, so half is filled up with these
black lines
and once I'm done filling it up, I'll duplicate that layer
and flip it over, using Edit > Transform > Rotate 180
then reposition it on the opposite side. I'll also use the eraser to get rid of this
center part of lines, so that they're not overlapping the pupil. This isn't really
strictly necessary.
the next step is to create a new layer, and to use white lines, and I do it
in the exact same way that I created the black lines
tiny little ovals, U-shape objects. If you're using a touch sensitive tablet like the
Wacoms
You can use two fingers to rotate the canvas around this way,
it makes it a lot easier to paint all the way around the circumference of the eye
just a little tip for those you with touch-sensitive tablets.
When the painting is done, we duplicate it the exact same way that we did
the black lines
now I'll duplicate both of those layers again, both the white and the black line layers
and with those duplicates, I'll go to my Filter menu >Blur > Gaussian Blur
Gaussian Blur, and just do a small blur
both layers. So I have a blurred version of both the black and the white lines
and then I'll apply them as Overlays
over the background, and this just makes it look a little bit less hand-drawn, a
and then when I'm done I'll save it out, and jump back into Maya 2016. And I want to
open up the HyperShade
and I'll graph the network of my iris material - so hold right click on the
material and choose Graph Network from the HyperShade. And now it's showing the network of
my materials, and I need to add
a new texture node, because I'll plug in that Photoshop texture I just added
so, on the left there, 2D Texture, and then just click File
and I'm gonna need another node - so I'll click on
Other Textures on the left here, and then add Layered Texture
and this is going to blend together the color that already created,
with the texture I made in Photoshop. And I need to connect the out color from
both the Ramp, and the new 2D Texture, into my Layered Texture - so I can click and drag
to connect one
and then in its attributes, I can click in the empty box to add another node to the Layered Texture
and now I can click and drag the second texture on to that new
node, so that both my textures are connected to Layered Texture
and I can middle mouse drag those swatches in the Layered Texture, to
rearrange them
and the one that's closest to the left is on top, and the one that's closer to
the right is on the bottom
it works a lot like Photoshop's layering system
now I'll connect this Layered Texture to the diffuse channel, my color channel, for my
iris, and we should see our texture pop-up
because I've layered the texture on top of my ramp. So I need to adjust the blend mode
the same way we adjust blend modes in Photoshop
and I'll click through and check all the different options
so the one I end up using here is Subtract. That one gives me the look I'm going for
now, if we look closely, we'll see the lines will be drawn
overlapping around the outside edges of the iris, and also into the pupil
in the center
we want to fix that. To do this, I use a Ramp to control the opacity of the texture in the Layered Texture
and the easiest way to do this is to just grab the Ramp I'm already using
and duplicate it by hitting CTRL+d, because we already know it matches up
positions that we need. And I'll just recolor it I use the existing pins. I just
change the outside pins to black
and the inside pins to white, and now I'll be able to use this
to fade out that 2D texture as it gets close to the edges of the iris and towards
the pupil in the center
I'll jump back to the Layered Texture, and now we need to plug this new Ramp
in. So what I do is go to the Layered Texture, I select
the texture - the iris texture that we created - and middle mouse drag that new
Ramp onto that Alpha in the Layered Texture. So: I want to drag it onto the word
Alpha. And now we'll see that it's controlling blending for the opacity
of that 2D texture, so that I can adjust
where the lines are towards the pupil and the outside, the iris
by just moving the pins on the new black and white Ramp that I've created.
I'll play around with the positions of the pins - you'll see that I pulled that white
one towards the centre
that'll make texture less opaque at the edges, but
it will blend things together more nicely. And when we look at it from far away,
it works pretty well. So this Ramp and Texture combo won't
hold up to super-close scrutiny, but
it only took us a few minutes to create. So this is great for background characters
or projects that have a more stylized art direction style
the other great thing about this combo is it allows me to change the color of the
eyes very easily
without needing to re-generate new textures for each color
all I have to do is go back into my original ramp, grab the color nodes
and start shifting them into you other parts of the spectrum
so if I want to create green eyes, I just move it from blue over to green or maybe
to yellow
and we'll end up with new color combinations. That makes it really easy to create new
eyes for each character that we're making.
That's it! That's how we put together simple eyes in Maya 2016, it's just that easy
any questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment! I'm James Taylor, as always, thanks
for watching. :)