2.49b Pixar Eyes Tutorial

[irakrakow]

Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KEN7NJkP0

Read the script: http://blender3dvideos.blogspot.com/2010/02/249-pixar-eye-tutorial.html

Download Ira's Pixar Eye Blend File: http://www.irakrakow.com/blendfiles/PixarEye.blend

The goal of this tutorial is to make a Pixar-looking eye. The idea for this tutorial came from a post by KSF2010 on my Blender 3D Forum, at http://forum.irakrakow.com. He rendered a whale with "Pixar eyes". You can see his render at: http://forum.irakrakow.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=235

I was curious how to do Pixar eyes. He mentioned some tutorials on the web.

This tutorial is based on: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Creating_Pixar-looking_eyes_in_Blender
Iris texture: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/File:Iris.png

This tutorial uses the same modelling and texturing technique described in the well-known MAX tutorial by Adam Baroody (http://www.3dluvr.com/rogueldr/tutorials/eye/eyes.html).

[Jergon]

Please, where is the Occlude background geometry button? And what is 3D Transform manipulator, where can I find it? Sorry, I have been searching those things about one hour and still nothing... Please, could you mention more specificaly where used buttons are located? Blender is VERY large thing and if I spend all the evening finding two or three buttons all around, I have no time and energy enough to learn more useful knowledges...

[irakrakow]

You need to be in edit mode. Occlude Background Geometry is the one which has a cube icon. It's all the way at the right, almost at the end, at the end of the group of 4 buttons (the first three are Vertex, Edge, and Face Select). Its purpose is to turn on or off the selection of geometry that's in the back when you do a box select.

The 3D transform manipulator icon is the hand with the index finger (I'm glad they chose a non-X rated finger) pointing up. It turns on or off the ability of rotating, scaling, or translating with the widget. From the menu you access with Ctrl-Space, you can enable or disable it.

[Gnaws]

For me the hardest part about eyes are creating eyelids. My blink shape keys seem to go thru the eyeball and I can't seem to get a good eyelid rig either.

Ira?

[irakrakow]

How about parenting the eyelid to the eye? Or make the hair of the eyelid a particle emitter?

[Gnaws]

I found a solution using fan bones(?). The setup is tedious, but with favorable results.

[irakrakow]

What are fan bones? Sounds like a great thing. Please share. Thanks.

[Gnaws]

First off - I can't take credit for this cool solution.

"Fan bones" use incremental copy rotation influence. When the front bone of the eyelid rig rotates up, the other bones in the eye rig also rotate incrementally.

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/2417

[irakrakow]

That's a great idea! Influence with constraints is really cool. Also, the influence can be animated, which means that for things like grabbing an object you can get very realistic effects.

[Gnaws]

For sure! This one of my favorite eye rigs. I've been meaning to try adding a deform mesh(?) to get an eye that can be scaled horizontally but still retaining the fan bone influence. Ira?