Anime eyes technique question
Sonofbelmont
Posts: 147
Hi
I just wanted to know if it's possible to create a eye setup similar to the one shown in the video below using Carrara 8.5?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At0NYut-9LQ
and if so then how would I go about creating such a setup
Any help would be appreciated
Thanks
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Comments
Use the Vertex modeler and target helpers. The names and locations of the tools may vary, and the software used may have some specialized tools, but Carrara has a VM, UV mapping abilities, rigging abilities, modifiers such as Point-At, etc. I didn't see anything in there that screamed at me that it was beyond Carrara's capability, or even pushing it.
So he's actually remapping UVs to animate eye movement. I'm not sure if you can animate UV Map changes in Carrara.
You can anime eyes in Carrara. Although since the new store switch over, the promo images for them are not there anymore, GKDantas' TOON for Generation 4 comes with, I believe, 3 sets of anime eyes shaders for Victoria 4, so they work on Aiko 4 as well.
There are a few other anime eye products out there, too - if you'd want to do the quick buy and add thing.
If you want to make your own, there are many ways to go about it, so I'll just start a ball rolling to see if we can get on a track that we like.
One way would be to actually morph and texture existing eyes of a figure, if you're using a figure that has eyes already. Victoria 4 is really easy to morph. You may add your morph targets directly to the main figure - something that she enjoys the privilege of all by herself in the DAZ world. The other figures need to have morph targets added to individual body parts, which can be a real pain if you want to cross parts with the same morph - but there are ways around that for non-V4 figures, too. For just the eyes, however, any figure I can think of from DAZ, even monsters and animals, you could go in and reshape the eyes to something just like, or similar to what the artist in the video did.
Like the video, you'll want to check your UVs. If editing a DAZ figure with soft select, and being careful to keep the polygons as uniform as possible, your UV positioning on the map should be pretty decent already. And if you have a texture on them that worked before your changes, you'll now have a good idea of the similarities of the original map, and what would fit nicely onto your new shape.
The nice idea, in my head, about using existing eyes from a figure, like V4, is that you'll have the morphforms sliders for control in poses and animations.
So if you go that route, you can paint your new eyes into a copy of the original maps to get the look you want, or you could really have some fun and 3d paint right on the model in Carrara.
Another idea altogether
What if you just wanted to replace the eyes, or add new eyes to a model that doesn't have any yet?
Making the shape made in the video is very easy in Carrara.
Insert a vertex object, which will launch you into the model room.
Close the model room and go back to the assembly room. It's good on your resources to close the window in your model room, if you're not going to work in it.
Back in the assembly room, select your newly made vertex object. at the upper left of the window, click on the wrench icon - which will bring the model room interface to you in the assemble room. Now you may interact your object with the whole scene, and see what you're doing. This is so helpful for scale, shape, direction, etc., and it also keeps the actual mesh location, outside of edit mode, in its zered location, as it has not yet been moved outside of being edited - which is good.
Now go to construct > 3d sphere
Filling in the information in the dialog that just popped up, you'll get a very similar resolution mesh as the one in the video leaving the default settings. The size will be way too large, so you can get it closer in this box, or just wait until you grab in in the next step. For this, you'll either want to leave the axis along the default of y or it might be x, but not z. In any case, if the central axis is facing the wrong direction when clicking okay, you just rotate it holding the shift key to keep it on 45 degree rotations, until the point is directly forward - even if you'll be changing it in the end. It will be easiest to get your shape nice and uniform if it's facing on of the main three axis.
At this point you can squish the globe, soft select the inner cone at the center of the front and push it in to flatten the front.
If you want to rid yourself of the back-facing polygons, like in the video, just select the back half and delete them. The video artist has clicked the "-" button on the selection before deleting, so that the sphere makes the round over the center cross section.
Double click a poly, or any way you want to select all, and in the top three icon on the far right at the top of the modeling window, click the right-most one to enter UV Edit mode. In the general tab, mine says Spherical by default, which should give me a decent UV. Check it out and make sure your polygons all have some real estate on the map. If they don't, that's another whole babble session - let me know.
With a decent UV and the shape and size that you need, you could now export the template and make a texture map outside of Carrara and load it into the shader, or you could 3d paint your own texture within Carrara, or you could entirely paint your anime eye by selecting and naming shader domains directly onto your mesh. The first two I've mentioned are topic in their own, so I'll mention a bit on this last method I've mentioned.
You now have your eye shape, and the single point of one end of the original sphere mesh now faces forward, away from the face. Select the polygons that form the circle around that single point. Back in the normal model view (no longer in UV mode - and not animation mode) half way down the right panel, select global tab.
Click the Add button which will bring up a window asking if you want to add the new domain to what you have selected. Yes. We do.
Name this "Pupil"
Now in the upper right under Selection, press the '+' button, which should grow your selection another ring of polygons. This, minus the pupil, will become the iris, so determine now of you wish to grow it some more. When you get the size of the iris right, go to the menu on top: Selection > Deselect By > Shading Domain and now select Pupil. Sometimes you won't see the deselection without rolling your zoom wheel in and out once, or some other camera movement.
Click the Add button again, click Yes, and name this one "Iris" and then change the name of Texture0 to Eye White.
Now if you want to change the shape of the iris or pupil, you can do so directly by changing the edges and vertices of the mesh, according to how you've just shader domain enhanced it. If you get some strange result shaping it, try it with smoothing on if you want.
If you want, you could even make animation morphs that drag the pupil and iris from side to side and up and down on the white to animate the apparent direction of the eye. These can be used in combinations to form any other angles you might need. Do note, however, that Carrara morphs don't work backwards, so you'll need an up, down, right, and left morph, individually. Alternately, you could instead make morphs that expand and contract the outermost portion of the eye white - so that you can just drag the eyes right and left, and these morphs can fix a hole in the head, and/or poke through.
Now you just apply whatever shader you want to the white, iris, and pupil and duplicate the eye for the other side.
A start on some thoughts, anyways.
I must have missed the UV map thing. You can animate the textures in a UV map.
Since Carrara can't do the remapping UV thing, another option would be to make a sphere and UV map that with the image for the eye, and manipulate that.
How would you like to be able to jam out in that freaking interface, eh? Ouch!
Yeah, but in that and 3ds max, you can do like he shows - that image he had could actually be just that single iris on a white background. The mapping editor allows you to tile the image directly within uv map mode - which is really powerful. I'm not sure if you could actually animate the eyes moving in that way. He very well may have just been demonstrating how you can change the position.
Don't get me wrong, I am totally content working in Carrara. But that new (at least since the last time I've seen it) interface looks ridiculously cool!
How would you like to be able to jam out in that freaking interface, eh? Ouch!
Yeah, but in that and 3ds max, you can do like he shows - that image he had could actually be just that single iris on a white background. The mapping editor allows you to tile the image directly within uv map mode - which is really powerful. I'm not sure if you could actually animate the eyes moving in that way. He very well may have just been demonstrating how you can change the position.
Don't get me wrong, I am totally content working in Carrara. But that new (at least since the last time I've seen it) interface looks ridiculously cool!
Right. I got what was happening when I watched the video. The animation in a UV map is different than adjusting the UV or whatever. I would just use a sphere in the VM as a separate polymesh so it could be rigged, and use a point at modifier and target helper to manipulate the orientation. I think ultimately you could have more control this way, provided the proper morphs were built into the eyeball.