Real Time Eye Shader, feedback?

Rigging
#1

Hi everyone!

I have these last week played around with Shader FX in Maya LT (haven’t have the chance to use Maya 2015 yet). This is the result:

Any feed back is welcome! :slight_smile:

#2

The shader on the iris looks nice. Are you modelling or faking a corneal bulge? The reflections don’t change as the eyeball looks around, but a real eyeball is not perfectly spherical. Also, you may want experiment with the contrast control on the reflections - that’s a key clue to the wetness of the surface that often gets overlooked. The examples here are great:

http://www.iryoku.com/stare-into-the-future

A little fake subsurface in the iris is also nice :slight_smile:

#3

Thanks Theodox!
The corneal and the sclera is now one object and the iris is one. I do have some bulge on the cornea, but I could do some more. And thanks up for the heads up with the wetness and SS in the iris! :slight_smile:

#4

You’ll want to do the SSS on the sclera, and not the iris as Jorge mentions in his GDC link (the one that Theodox posted). The iris is a ring of muscle, but the sclera is pretty much a bag of hard jello.

Overall, your eye shader looks quite good. You might want to boost your gloss up a bit, particularly on the sclera to avoid getting too much of a plastic look. You can also experiment with GGX, Disney, or Beckman roughness based specular lighting models to get a longer tail on your specular response than the standard Phong or Blinn-Phong highlight provides.

#5

Ok, thanks Brendan! I will try to get a “longer” specular on the sclera. And look into the gloss and reflection to get a more wet look. Will update you guys with the results!

#6

Here is the final version! :slight_smile:

Thanks guys for the feedback.

#7

Looks great, lot’s of upgrades.

The AO looks a little bit strong, is it affecting the direct lighting as well as the indirect lighting? Ideally, you’d only have the AO affect the indirect lighting to avoid the “dirty surface” look. The direct lighting should get obscured by shadowing where it needs to be.

#8

Thanks Brendan!

Right now I shadow in the eye is created by a second plane with transparency. It might look a little bit to strong though… I didn’t know how I would use a correct AO when the eyeball is constantly moving.

#9

Great work, you could improve it by making the pupil dilation effect the iris uv’s.

#10

Definitely! Now though, the whole iris/pupil is a projection directly onto the object and I’m not really sure how I would do that…

#11

Hi everyone!

I just thought I should let you know I have exported the shader to a cgfx and tweaked it to work well in Maya. I also uploaded the sfx file (if someone wants to tweek it in Shader FX) and the mesh and rig I used in my video. All the download links are provided down below:

Thought someone might be interested :slight_smile: