I have yet to see a Poser figure that looks "alive" in the eyes. This may sound weird but I have seen some of the most realistic images but when I look into the eyes of the figure, nothing. Kind of like looking at a statue. Is this just me?

No, it is NOT just you ...

The eyes are the window of the human soul and Poser figures do not, nor will they ever, have a real soul.

Some figure's eyes come pretty close by using reflections though.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Also the lack of the natural wet look & something with the corners of the eyes leave an image lacking. Also, a lot of people just render & don't position/focus the eyes on the object they should..leaving us with a blank/comatose stare.

I'm going to be contrary (so what's new?) about the eyes here. Eyes are really bags of jelly with a wet skin. Not too much expressiveness in them, really. Once you have 'em pointing the right way and maybe play with the material settings and the pupil size, you're good to go, except... dlk30341 made a good point about the eye corners, which is part of the problem. People seldom walk around with their eyelids in the default Poser position. We blink, squint, wince and so forth. Playing with expression morphs or dialling in a few wrinkles here and there can work wonders.

The eyes are the window of the human soul and Poser figures do not, nor will they ever, have a real soul.

I agree 100%. Poser figures are basically electronic mannequins. And even the best mannequins don't have the true appearance of life in them.

Especially when one looks at the eyes.

Frankly, I don't think that this will ever change -- although I've seen a few images that come close.

BTW - even the best Poser animations look like electronic golems.

Dr Geep quoth '.... and Poser figures do not, nor will they ever, have a real soul.' Well.. that puts paid to my pre-order for Poser 6 when it comes along :-(

Um, hey ziggie ... ... I didn't mean THAT kind of "soul." I am sure that Poser6 will ROCK !!! cheers, dr geep ;=]

Ah, the Good Doctor was referring to how Bowie called his Young Americans album "Relentless Plastic Soul". Well, it's a start. I guess we'd progress from there to the Beatles's "Rubber Soul". Dynamic, of course. walks away singing Sam and Dave's "Soul Man"

It might improve in time.. for now I've seen a few that came close I think. http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=174773 -- I think he got the wet look ok. http://www.soanala.com/ --- 2003 gallery, particularly the modern category that's in his 2003 gallery. With the character wearing red. I guess this shows what posing the eyes can add to the character and render.

Bah. Absolutely, a lot of Poser renders look less than realistic. But...there are paintings that do seem "alive." Or at least that have a closer seeming to real people. So it isn't something inherent to the act of transferring a human to an image of a human -- hey, even a photo is just pixels when you get it on to a computer monitor -- but some lack of how Poser is applied to the task. My take comes sideways from Mori ("The Uncanny Valley.") Painting works by being impressionistic; fudging details but presenting the sense of reality to the viewer. Poser is generally asked to provide a very detailed, very realistic look, and this bares to the eye a multitude of subtle flaws. An almost-perfect duplicate of a face is a lot easier for our brains to critique than a sketch or impressionist daub of the same face. To my eye, the greatest failure in most Poser renders is in the pose. The curves and flows and stresses and balances of the human body are hard to capture with the dial interface and within the limitations of the rigging.

I was thinking about this the other day in regards to animation.

Geep has a great point here. The thing that is missing (in my opinion) in animated humans is the fact that they do not have a soul. How to you REALLY animate that and nail it dead on the money? I think this is why humans will never be replaced by digital actors. We as humans have souls. Polygon cages do not.

Yes but the person animating the character has a soul. That does not mean that he/she can inject that soul into a character.

It's the same as experiancing something amazing and then trying to explain that experiance to someone. There are no words that can REALLY give the person that same felling that you had.

If you watch the characters in Final Fantasy you will notice that something is missing. If you watch the characters in Polar Express you will notice that something is missing. It isn't good animation that is missing, they are both done very well. What is it then?

Side note: I read in 3D World that Tom Hanks did the acting for the motion capture of the main character (the boy) in Polar Express. I thought that that was interesting.

Anyway... I was then watching iRobot. I remember thinking "Man that robot feels real. It feels like it has real emotion". Then I got to thinking "would that robot character feel real if it were a human"?

What I realized was that it is possible to make a CG robot feel like it has REAL emotion but not a CG human. Why? We (at our core) expect a human to have the emotion but not the robot. When the robot acts remotely close to human we are amazed.

Or am I just crazy? :)

CHeers,

Joe

Message edited on: 12/22/2004 14:18

Great philosophical tangent this thread has taken. One of my favourite subjects, the nature of the soul (assuming there is such a thing). I spent years believing I don't have one. Not just me, but everyine. Now I'm not so sure. That said, my take on the whole deal is somewhat different from the Judeo/Christian/Islamic view. I believe it's just an operating system for running a human. What we see in art as realistic is, as pointed out by nomuse, often very unrealistic in terms of sheer physical representation, yet it moves us somehow, suggests life, movement and, yup, soul. I believe it's a perceptual thing. We're wired to be responsive to certain shapes, patterns, angles and so forth, that even the crudest representation resonates in us and says "This is reality". For example, a hand drawn line by a skilled artist will always look more pleasing to the eye than a badly posed 3D model, no matter how accurate the mesh or how realistic the texture. As an extreme example, Picasso's cubist paintings look more human and realistic than 99.9% of digital art, simply because they capture the sense of humanity rather than just the physical dimensions. IMO, it's not the soul we're missing in pictures, it's the recognisable patterns of shape and movement. as if we insinctively respond to that which is "right".

re: "(assuming there is such a thing)."

Hi Paul,

I believe that there is ! ... How else do you explain conscience. (or the lack thereof) ;=[

However, having said that, ... I, also, believe that there are those out there in the world that have literally "sold" their souls to the Devil.

Have you ever considered what Devil is ... spelled backwards?

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Very interesting comments. I like Lawndart's thinking and I agree. I have watched Final Fantasy a dozen times because I'm totally amazed at the work/art but still, something is missing. Nomuse makes an interesting point about paintings and paintings of poser figures (Prog and ToxicAngel just to mention 2 examples) seem very real or having a soul but they are no longer "realistic" and so maybe my mind is able to accept them better. But, look at the old masters, I mean, they were working in Oils and achieving life like paintings. So, is that the secret? One cannot create a lifelike image of a 3d figure using a program but one must somehow transfer a piece of themselves to the art?

Doc, I believe it's possible to transfer a piece of yourself to your work, no matter what the medium. Not everyone has the ability, though.

sweet soul sister..but not to get Cultish on ya..;) Lack of eye focus is a noobie indicator, you can fake something (sincerity, if you can fake that, you've got it made)..I think what might help is actually introducing imperfections, such as a slight imbalance in various facial features (though in my case, it's unintentional)..can give a little character to it..but a soul..well, that's the thing about Metaphysics..no answers, but such wonderful questions..;)

All, There is a new product at PoserPros called Arki's EYEdeas which looks like it might give new life to the eyes. regards, Andrew

Attached Link: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20041213/blind.html

"Study: Blind Man Reads Emotion" Recognizing faces, emotions etc. is all hardwired deep in our brains and I would guess evolved pretty early in our history. It's one of those complexities of perception that we're just beginning to understand. I tend to agree that even hyper-realistic 3D rendering is missing some subtle unconscious clues that a skilled painter is able to capture. Some people claim to be able to see "auras" and I suppose there might be some kind of electro-magnetic or other type of field that living things generate that we can sense but how does that translate to an image. If a painting can have the elusive "spark of life," so to speak then I don't see it as some metaphysical manifestation in the arrangement of pigment molecules. The fact that 3D or animation lacks that indefinable "something" doesn't necessarily mean that the missing ingredient lies in the realm of the supernatural. I think it's more likely an incredibly complex interplay of muscle and tissue combined with the emotional state and preconceptions of the viewer, all filtered through the kind of low level firmware in our brains dedicated to processing that information. It's a terribly difficult problem but I don't think it's insoluble. I think it's at least conceivable that at some point we might create robots that display all the characteristics of human intelligence but whether they would be "alive" or have "souls" is a question for theology and philosophy, not science.

Eyes don`t have any "soul" in them, they have a look that should be able to be replicated in most 3d programs.

This thread returns at least once a year. One important thing about eyes and Poser has to do with refraction geometry. In reality, irises are pretty flat but live behind a convex lens which makes them appear convex -- degree of curvature proportional to the angle of the lens. These kinds of refraction mechanics don't exist in Poser 4, and I confess to being too lame to know to what extent they can be simulated in 5. 3D modelers for Poser usually compensate by designing concave irises (at least two designers have admitted this to me in email). And because of this, shadows fall on exactly the opposite of where they're supposed to. On top of this is the hardness of the edge between iris/cornea and white, something you won't see in real eyes because it's (relatively speaking) soft tissue, not a cuticle. Hard not to notice once you know what to look for.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=836470&Start=1&Artist=face%5Foff&ByArtist=Yes

My 2 cents....The reason eyes don't seem to have any soul is because, just like skin, there is all sorts of stuff happening with light that Poser doesn't take into account. For example, if you look closely at a good eye reference, you'll notice red light bleeding in from the sides (light coming in through the eyesocket skin), and you'll also notice that light enters the eyeball, and comes out on the other side, giving it a 'glow'. None of this happens in a Poser render - although I tried - see link above to a gallery image where I applied the RealSkinShader to the eyewhite. Utterly failed, but I think with a bit more experimentation more realism could be achieved. I don't think reflections are the answer - I've seen lots of good photo's of eyes, where the only reflection is the camera flash.

Duane and Face_Off's answer's seem good from the anatomical standpoint. So, a complex eyeball/socket model with multiple materials and a good renderer should be able to do it--unless it's really the soul, in which case, we'll have to wait for at least a 1.6225927682921336339157801028813e+32 bit CPU.

1. Using math nodes, it's conceivable to create an iris shader that bulges the iris proportional to the camera's angle and simulate the lens effect (think angle-controlled displacement). 2. Different materials across the visible outer region of the eye to handle flow and reflection is obviously another issue but doable. 3. Also, the wet surface on eyes is not perfectly smooth like cueballs; the moisture lubricating them is essentially a thin mucous with a random texture to it that light catches (and then art directors airbrush smooth). Closeup photo references bear this out. Perhaps a very subtle fractal node could be added. BTW, face_off gets megaprops for making the cornea/iris edge blur properly in his render.

So it would appear that what we are facing with eyes is the same thing we faced with skin a few short years ago. A need to better understand the properties of the eyes to better present them.

Number 1 sounds like this I found on Pixar's creation of 'A Bug's Life': "...the main characterseyes are a simple model; the pupil, iris, and cornea are created by a shader. "Light actually comes in, bends through the cornea, and we see it as it hits the inner iris. The iris has been painted by a painter, but the shader knows how to apply and deform it so as the eyes dilate, youll see that the iris actually pulls back."

Shrek 2 did the same type of correct lens. They felt that that was a huge differance between the characters in the first and 2nd movie. They said that the eyes felt more real in Shrek 2. They didn't say LOOKED more real, they said FELT more real. Feelings... whow whow whow whow whow feelings... feelings of love.

I think a lot of these eye problems could be solved by more postwork...I know there are some people out there who think everything should be done in one program...but think about it. You are chaining yourself to a program where most artists replace the entire Runtime library with third party materials right after installing it:) The best tricks I've seen for making eyes realistic is in adding a shadow across the eye from the eyelids, which most people neglect to do. Still, eyes have more depth than a 2D image map is ever going to be capable of. The shader thing might be the way to go...sounds interesting in any case.

duanemoody, I think the cornea/iris edge blur is simply achieved by studying the mesh that DAZ has supplied us (for V3) for the eyes. Most eye textures don't actually use the geometery the way it was designed. My reading is that it was ment to be like... EyeWhite - texturemap + bumpmap + specular Pupil - texturemap + bumpmap Iris - texturemap + bumpmap Cornea - transparent + specular (+ refraction?) If you follow the above setup, you get blur (although not as much as I would like). A lot of texturesets seem to paste the texturemap on the Cornea, which is not right. I like your iris adjustment idea. Does having refraction in the cornea address this?

Attached Link: http://www.cgtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-12472.html

"...lot of these eye problems could be solved by more postwork..." That's certainly true, especially, if you accept that a skilled painter can achieve realism more effectively than most 3D examples. I think the downsides to the postwork approach are 1. Not everyone is good at it and 2. It effectively eliminates animation. Of course, currently, for Poser, you're probably not looking at a large amount of animation being done with closeups where the eyes are that critical but just speaking generally, and perhaps looking toward the future. Link-interesting thread on CGTalk about creating "Pixar eyes," including a few words from a Pixar animator on how they do it. Even includes a reference to -shudder- Renderosity :-)

Does having refraction in the cornea address this? Assuming P5 can't do refraction, the point of the idea is to simulate the refraction mechanics with the shader reading the corneal poly's normals, the angle of the camera viewing them, and to recalculate the displacement based on it. If P5 can do refraction the above is a total waste of time.

Ummmm, well P5 /can/ do refraction. You just need to plug the cornea's Index of Refraction into the refraction node and render with ray-tracing. You can also modify both the iris concavity and the cornea bulge thru morphs.

P5 can do refraction. The above is great for P4 users though.

Pro Pack users, you mean, unless you've figured out how to cram Python into Poser Artist.

Yes... ProPack My bad

face_off: Something like this? Still trying to figure out how this works with V3 and her corneal materials.

Open V3 up in wings, and delete all her body and head materials except the eye polys. That shows you what does what.

FWIW. ;=] Holiday cheers, dr geep ;=]

geep: Your Vicky diagram applies to V1/V2. face_off: My problem is with getting a working refraction node for the corneas. Everything I try goes too far. Oh, and merry Christmas, all.

Easier to explain V3's eyeball materials in cross section. I've elected to use CorneaBulge and IrisOut in this diagram to make the materials easier to differentiate; by default the materials overlay each other almost perfectly and the cornea's curve replaces the eyewhite's missing front section. V3's eyewhites are partial spheres with the back 3rd cut off and the corneal area in front cut off. The pupil is a flat disk behind the iris and neither uses transparency. The cornea is the only part which uses transparency. Oddly enough the V3 MAT poses also give it the eyeball texture despite the fact that 100% transparency makes it irrelevant.

This is what the eyeball actually looks like without any morphs.

duanemoody - what do you mean by "everything I try goes too far"? Realistic eyes are on my to-do list, so I haven't played around enough with this yet....but what I was going to try was..... Eyewhite - texturemaps plus some incidence effect to simulate light passing through the eyelids and head into the eyeball plus specular Iris and Pupil - texturemaps, but no specular. No need for Incidence effect. Cornea - Specular (same as eyewhite) - and no texturemaps (you are right - they are redundant on the V3 mat pose). Maybe set the diffuse colour to grey, and only make them 95-98% transparent (since nothing is completely trans). Attach a RayTrace->Refract node to the refraction_color. Set refraction_value high (0.9-1.0). Set IndexOfRefraction to whatever value give you the right effect (there is a website with IOR's for different materials - maybe it has eyeball?). The overall refraction effect will be a factor of the IOR, CorneaBulge and IrisOut. But I haven't actually tried the refraction thing on the cornea....so let us know how you go!

See what I mean?

Duane, have you had a msg go into limbo? I though IOR was always greater than 1 (ie. 1.0 thru to around 1.6 - at a guess).

The cornea turns to a solid color if I do that.

Thanks zorares. You set off a good thread.

duanemoody,

face_off turned me onto this thread. I'm way late but was planning a thread similar to this a little later on. There are so many things I've tried to get decent eyes.

Here's an older one I found that got refraction through a lens, but not right on the #s. I need a nodemaster to get some finely tuned shaders going. As stated, there's a lot more "that" meets the eye..It needs its own light shader and a blender. In some cases a very fine shadow (tough in P5) and wet contact spotting (random). Of course reflects and refracts in some cases (closeups)

Poser5 does do good refraction if you fudge logic a bit. I'll try to find the PZ3 but I remember..

reflect, some bump and alt diffuse on irises
reflect, refract, bump, anistropic on cornea (glass sphere in this case). and a tad of spec value (cloudiness).

I've made some headway since I did this and will go further when I free up some time. This is just a refraction ex. Forgot to add, anistropic is a false lead since it will highlight anywhere on the eyeball regardless of shadows...which means you have to bank all your lights in a line across from her face...Good for 1 or 2 spots though.

Message edited on: 12/29/2004 01:26

As soon as you figure something out let us know. I'm chomping at the bit, here.