Cat-like ’eyeshine’ in Daz 3D - Tutorial Page 6

SpyroRue

Hey, I was wondering If anyone would happen to know If and how you could create reflective eyes like felines eg cats, leopards, lions, panthers etc. have, that reflect light giving off what is described as eyeshine? The riddick is a bit of an example, though, I only want to achieve it with the Genesis pupils.

I know I could do it in PhotoShop in post work, but if it's possible I think it would work better.

DaWaterRat

I haven't tried it, but turning up the reflection on the Iris should work. It may take a bit to get it to look right.

edit: Okay, I was going to work on some characters today anyway, including ones that likewise might have glowey eyes.

It needs a reflection map, as opposed to ray-traced reflections (I think. I didn't try it with a full scene). Specular was white at 50%, map was from Bice's Shiny Freebie over at Renderosity.

SpyroRue

Wow.. that's beautiful!, I'm trialling what you suggested as we speak :) Thanks for your fast response :D

Valandar

DaWaterRat said:

I haven't tried it, but turning up the reflection on the Iris should work. It may take a bit to get it to look right.

edit: Okay, I was going to work on some characters today anyway, including ones that likewise might have glowey eyes.

It needs a reflection map, as opposed to ray-traced reflections (I think. I didn't try it with a full scene). Specular was white at 50%, map was from Bice's Shiny Freebie over at Renderosity.

Doesn't work for what he's talking about.

He wants the PUPILS to shine like a cat's, not the irises. And for that, it might need an eye replacement prop.

DaWaterRat

Same principle should work with pupils

SpyroRue

Yeah, I know she meant pupils lol it's all good :) I just tried reflection without the map... It's touchy lol! Just getting the shareCg thing...

@Valandar - What do you mean about the replacement prop?

@DaWaterRat - Wow, those eyes are mezmirizing lol

EDIT: Renderosity thing.

SpyroRue

Heres the first draft render lol... Think I need to reduce the reflection lol

Chohole

Looking good, but cats eyes tend to be greeny, which makes them look very sppoky

SlimerJSpud

To make glowing eyes, you could dial up the ambient channel and tint it as needed. There's also this general thread from the old forum:

Somebody mentioned eyes

SpyroRue

Haha! That's true lol Cats are awesome :)

Here's draft 2 Render, Added some colour, More a pale blue than green though... I reduced the reflection, and set a medium blur.

Might add a black inner shadow on the map, cos it seems to have a defining white stroke appearing on the outer edges.

SpyroRue

Slimer_J_Spud said:

To make glowing eyes, you could dial up the ambient channel and tint it as needed. There's also this general thread from the old forum:

Somebody mentioned eyes

I'm reading through the thread, thanks for that :) Wish the photos on the first page were there.

SlimerJSpud

marcusfinnigon said:

Slimer_J_Spud said:

To make glowing eyes, you could dial up the ambient channel and tint it as needed. There's also this general thread from the old forum:

Somebody mentioned eyes

I'm reading through the thread, thanks for that :) Wish the photos on the first page were there.
You can manually change all the "origimage" picture links to start with "formarchive.daz3d.com" and they will work i.e:
Old link:

Working link:
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/postimages/origimage_2_355072.jpg

There's a utility for that too somewhere...

SpyroRue

Damn I wish I was in the states, it's like 430Am here.. Good thing I'm working nightshift tomorow... I should have started this thread heaps earlier lol

Mattymanx

Use the Ambiant colour. Refelction takes time to calculate.

SpyroRue

Thanks for the tip mattymanx, I'll give it a go next.

Just re-dit the eye itself, using parameters from M5 Philip... Notices my eye settings were seemin rather off.. By the looks of this render some of my lights arent set for shadows perhaps... Getting strange light on the sides of the eyes

SpyroRue

Okay... Thats Trippy lol At least by using the ambiant Colour, In which obviously it neads to be mapped accordingly with M5 texture, I'll have greater control over the appearance and intensity. I'll toy around with this for a while :) but alas it is now 5am in Australia... and I must sleep! Thanks for the help guys :) And the cat Chohole LOL! I'll be back tomoz before work.

chrisschell

The other possibility would be to mount a pointlight inside each eye to shine out through the pupil... this would be a good way to simulate the reflected light... but is much trickier to manage... I used this technique in a mecha render to get the effect of a glow from the main sensor cameras and it works well if you can pull it off...

SpyroRue

chrisschell said:

The other possibility would be to mount a pointlight inside each eye to shine out through the pupil... this would be a good way to simulate the reflected light... but is much trickier to manage... I used this technique in a mecha render to get the effect of a glow from the main sensor cameras and it works well if you can pull it off...

That's an interesting idea... Need to be very precise and the light settings of the pinlights would require accordingly accurate settings as-well.

I'm thinking the genesis eye isn't anatomically designed for pin lights... That said, I'm sure there was no thought what so ever of light being reflected back through the retina from the back of the eye, nore was Tapetum Lucidum layer inside the eye, which enhances biological night vision and is the responsible for the 'eye shine'. And I wouldn't expect it either, since the human eye doesn't have that reflective layer like the night predators and the closest human 'eyeshine' is the unwanted Red eye, we sometime get in our photo's with a flash.

Just a few Inspiration Pics...
Notice that the angle of light has a great affect on the eyeshine. The Leopard and the greyish-black cat are great examples of this.

SpyroRue

And of couse I should have one on the Riddick, he's the only character other than poor examples of b grade zombies that actually used the eyeshine idea's for humans.

SpyroRue

Okay here's draft 4a3 lol... Playing with Ambiant Map, What I did was paint the eyeshine in Photoshop and mapped it accordingly with M5. I think it's good this way that it's controlable, the downside is that every different render/scene will require a new eye shine map appropriate to the scene. Any way here it is...

Kendall Sears

marcusfinnigon said:

Okay here's draft 4a3 lol... Playing with Ambiant Map, What I did was paint the eyeshine in Photoshop and mapped it accordingly with M5. I think it's good this way that it's controlable, the downside is that every different render/scene will require a new eye shine map appropriate to the scene. Any way here it is...

If you want real "eye reflections" in addition to the eye-shine, you could create a geometry shell and hide everything except the eyes. Then set the reflection parameters to what you want. It may be overkill, but it will give you the necessary flexibility to play further.

Kendall

SpyroRue

That's interesting, could you elaborate on the 'Geometry Shell' thing, I haven't any knowledge in that area lol. And on the reflection parameters, would you suggest a reflection map? While the ambient map is effective, IT IS A PAINTED ON EFFECT and lighting in the scene barely has affect on it. As you can see in the above reference photos the lighting is the KEY to eyeshine, and even the subtlest angle change of the eye and/or light source completely changes the visual effect of the eyeshine. Hence the darkness and vibrace in areas of Riddicks eyes, and the lesser brightness between the two eyes of the leopard and greyish-black cat.

SpyroRue

I'm wondering if any of the daz team or character vendors who make textures and set up the parameters for the character products, if they might have some idea's. I'm alittle unsure of what I should try next :s

Kendall Sears

marcusfinnigon said:

That's interesting, could you elaborate on the 'Geometry Shell' thing, I haven't any knowledge in that area lol. And on the reflection parameters, would you suggest a reflection map? While the ambient map is effective, IT IS A PAINTED ON EFFECT and lighting in the scene barely has affect on it. As you can see in the above reference photos the lighting is the KEY to eyeshine, and even the subtlest angle change of the eye and/or light source completely changes the visual effect of the eyeshine. Hence the darkness and vibrace in areas of Riddicks eyes, and the lesser brightness between the two eyes of the leopard and greyish-black cat.

This is DS4.5 specific: Select your figure and click on Create->New Geometry Shell. This will create a shell around your figure. Now, hide the unneeded areas using whatever method(s) you prefer (in DS4.5 there are a plethora of methods). Then on the remaining surfaces you can get as detailed as manipulating the properties of the individual polygons using the polygon group editor, or as coarse as you want by using existing regions. In any case, change the eye surface's properties to what you want/need. This is the fun part! You'll be surprised at what you can do with layered geometry shells... heh heh heh (evil laugh).

EDIT: I've attached a screenshot where I've created a Geom Shell, colored it Magenta, and set the Skin Torso surface Opacity to 0. This took all of about 30 seconds to do.

Kendall

SpyroRue

Kendall Sears said:

marcusfinnigon said:

That's interesting, could you elaborate on the 'Geometry Shell' thing, I haven't any knowledge in that area lol. And on the reflection parameters, would you suggest a reflection map? While the ambient map is effective, IT IS A PAINTED ON EFFECT and lighting in the scene barely has affect on it. As you can see in the above reference photos the lighting is the KEY to eyeshine, and even the subtlest angle change of the eye and/or light source completely changes the visual effect of the eyeshine. Hence the darkness and vibrace in areas of Riddicks eyes, and the lesser brightness between the two eyes of the leopard and greyish-black cat.

This is DS4.5 specific: Select your figure and click on Create->New Geometry Shell. This will create a shell around your figure. Now, hide the unneeded areas using whatever method(s) you prefer (in DS4.5 there are a plethora of methods). Then on the remaining surfaces you can get as detailed as manipulating the properties of the individual polygons using the polygon group editor, or as coarse as you want by using existing regions. In any case, change the eye surface's properties to what you want/need. This is the fun part! You'll be surprised at what you can do with layered geometry shells... heh heh heh (evil laugh).

Kendall

Haha! Thanks soo much Kendall! I'll give it a go, and i'll post my discoveries lol (Though I've gotta go to work soon, so I'll post it asap) And for the record, I do indeed use Daz 4.5. :)

Kendall Sears

Heh heh, just thought of something...

Anyone remember the scene in MIB where the alien blinks with 2 "sets of eyelids"? Well, this could be done in DS using the geometry shell methods I laid out above and slitted eye textures overlaid onto the shell. Increase the "slit" to open the inner eyelid and decrease it to close the inner eyelid. Then blink the "normal" eyelid. Now your alien can be out of breath too!

Kendall

SpyroRue

Well that seems effective... I havent added a reflection map and havent added the ambiant map. Reflection strength 35% Ref Col White, Opacity 50% and ambient strength 0%

EDIT: Keep in mind I havn't altered the acual pupil since my latest ambient test

I need to examine the test render and try to work out what to change lol

SpyroRue

Maybe I should try blending the Reflection map from earlier with the ambient map... Athough that defeats the purpose of the reflection map doesn't it :S

I have soo much to learn about the Geometry shell lol but I seen now what you were suggesting kandell. Do you recommend a reflect map or not? I'm gonna have to read up on reflections I think :)

Chohole, if you see this (And I dont know if your in a completly different department of Daz) If you could perhaps ask the team what might be best for what I'm trying to acheive :) Thx

Kendall Sears

marcusfinnigon said:

Maybe I should try blending the Reflection map from earlier with the ambient map... Athough that defeats the purpose of the reflection map doesn't it :S

I have soo much to learn about the Geometry shell lol but I seen now what you were suggesting kandell. Do you recommend a reflect map or not? I'm gonna have to read up on reflections I think :)

Chohole, if you see this (And I dont know if your in a completly different department of Daz) If you could perhaps ask the team what might be best for what I'm trying to acheive :) Thx

I wouldn't use a reflection map. I would use a "glass" like shader on the cornea area on the geom shell to achieve the real light reflections from the environment while still showing the detail from behind.

Kendall

SpyroRue

So, I was working on the eyeshine with your latest tips :) and it was actually getting there I think... I just came off night-shift and worked away, first I set up the reflections on the shell like you said, noticed nothing was working... 20min later I realize i forgot to turn on the reflection DER lol!

Then I played around, and had to set up a spot light to be able to see a light reflection without a reflect map and discovered that it certainly required to have the ambient on the actual pupil, but a generic one will bring life to it. I came up with this render draft... but then DS crashed :(

So I take this all as a sign that I should be in bed and not on the puta.

I'll pick up from this tomoz :) Thanks Kendall!

Note: Before Daz crashed, I was refineing the reflection and adding colour... But I couldn't render it before it crashed. (That's the first time DS 4.5 has let me down :( )

SpyroRue

Ok, had to set up my scene again since the crash... I hadn't saved the Geom Shell, and I just worked directly on the pupil.

I've realised that the reflection is not being playing nice for me, I don't know if that is because it has chosen to reflect the viewport background colour, but none the less Direct and Indirect lighting seemingly has NO affect. I figure I've made an error somewhere in the parameters so I attached an image of it.

I'm of firm belief that direct lighting is the only time the reflection should be lighting up the pupil, and don't understand why it's lighting up without it.