My 3D World... one of them.

Dolbomir

So, I thought I'd start a thread about the new world I'm designing as a first real art project using 3D art beyond modding games.

I am quite the noob when it comes to 3D art--aside from some tweaking of some Bethesda game related stuff in Blender and NifSkope, I have practically no experience before switching to DAZ3D something like two weeks ago.

So here's a brief rehash plus a little back story of what I already covered on this project in the Custom Character Workshop and Render Thread.

This project is based on a somewhat crazy series of dreams I had a few years (less than a decade, I think?) ago. The dream involved a subterranean (living in a cave system, not really "hollow Earth" grade crazy) nation of hyper-advanced former humans who used a bio-technology coupled with a weird, almost magic-like energy system.

They would develop as most humans do up to a certain point, but then get "activated"--merged on a genetic level with a semi-sentient biomechanism that would enable them to bend space and (to a much lesser degree) time (as well as some other dimensions; it was a dream, so I won't get too far into its pseudophysics). The result was no longer fully human, virtually invulnerable as long as they had any molecular mass their biomechanisms could convert to fix them, capable of shapeshifting (using the converted mass), etc.

In particular, when venturing onto the surface (only the still curious and adventurous younger members of that nation formed the scouting parties), they modified their eyes to serve their purposes better.

Normally, their eyes looked almost human, except for being more reflective and sort of metallic looking. When scouting, in both day light and at night time, their eyes became black--although for different reasons.

In daylight, their eyes were black and reflective, filtering and reflecting the light via a photochemical reaction of some component they generated in their sclera, iris, and cornea. Kinda like transition lenses with anti-glare, except stronger (they live in caves after all).

In a low light environment, their sclera would become black and glassy to absorb and let in more light, their iris would become black to absorb more light, their pupils would dilate and enlarge into a vertical, more cat like appearance. There was also a crystalline layer beneath their retina that reflected more light into it, greatly enhancing their night vision (kinda like a cat's... or a shark's). The result was, their night eyes were glassy black except for the pupil, which would appear to glow if it reflected light.

They could rapidly switch between night and day mode on demand (so the transition chemical worked well, I guess).

This is the effect I am currently trying to replicate.

Setting the sclera to a glossy metalic black is easy enough, but making the pupil appear to reflect and glow yet remain almost black is proving to be a challenge.

So far I tried:

- setting pupil to less than 100% opacity, full reflection (white), full ambient light (dark yellow), full specular (dark yellow) with low glossiness, dark yellow diffuse
> I can barely see any result--and even that on only one of my monitors (see attached)
- setting pupil to various degrees of transparency with a spherical arealight behind it.
> comes out black on my renders. If I crank up the light intensity, the skin has a weird yellow glow on it, but the eyes are still pitch black.

Any ideas on how this effect could be accomplished?

Thanx

Dolbomir

Hm. looks like setting sclera, iris, cornea and pupil to a crhome shader instead of textures kinda works... still need to tweak the parameters, but it's starting to shape up...

...probably should make the iris less reflective...

Tramp Graphics

As someone who has a character with chrome eyes, don't make anything"less" reflective". My character, Ashley Chrome has fully chromed cybernetic eyes; even the corneas are mirrored over (like mirror shades), so all you see when looking into her eyes is your own reflection. It's a freaky effect, especially given how "hot" she is. The trick, of course, is to have something in front of the character(but behind the camera) to reflect in his eyes, or use a reflection map if there's no background. I like having real reflections though.Otherwise, all that shows up is solid black, not the effect you're looking for, I presume. Here's a link to an early pic of her (she's since been overhauled with new morphs, hair, etc. since this was done). It's still the best render of her to show her eyes. Here's another, more recent pic with her in it, though you really have to look closely to see the refelections in her eyes

Dolbomir

That's pretty cool. Also, good point on the reflections... come to think of it, I have nothing in front of him in these shots I'm testing. Thanks.

In my case, chrome/reflective finish would only work for the daylight mode--when their eyes filter and reflect light.

For the night mode, they absorb light. The outter surface of their eyes (sclera and iris) is glassy but not reflective. The only reflection that gets out is from tapetum lucidum (the layer beneath retina)--and even that gets muted by the chemically darkened cornea.

Dolbomir

Dialed back pretty much all light from the iris... I guess, I'll just keep it at that--sclera and iris black, pupil somewhat yellowish (only visible on one of my monitors, so subtle enough, I guess)...

anyone tried the eye surface thingy? I wonder if that'd be more useful for reflections on the entire eye...

IndigoJanson

Not sure if it's any use but this thread and Spyro's cool glow in the dark eye effect came to mind: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/6376/

Dolbomir

Jindi said:

Not sure if it's any use but this thread and Spyro's cool glow in the dark eye effect came to mind: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/6376/

Thanks--I used a similar effect on the pupil (although it's barely visible, as most light shouldn't escape)... I still haven't tried the eye surface thingy--want a reflection across the entire eye on top of this effect and the black eye overall.

Will have to update this with results when I get a new computer--it looks like I fried my poor ancient Core 2 Quad with my rendering :lol:

what used to render in 20-30 min now can't finish in 6hrs O.o