Hi all,

I'm pretty pleased with how reflective the eyes are (thanks Bagginsbill!) and now the lower lids come to my attention. I'm not sure if this has been asked before but, is there any special node trick to sort've soften the line between the lower lid and the eye, so it looks more natural? Attached is a render of what I'm talking about.

Thanks in advance!

--R.

What figure is that, Apollo?  Are you rendering with Smooth Polygons enabled?  For Apollo, you probably want to look at the material zone "SoftTissue" and make the color match the adjacent zone a little better, it looks to me like the problem is coming from the texture of SkinFace not matching SoftTissue very well.

I'm using the David figure from DAZ.

I've tried adding glossy to the "eyesocket" material and it still doesn't seem to look wet or softened. 

--R.

EyeSocket does seem to be the material zone you want.  I don't think adding glossy or other lighting node is going to help make that border less obvious, it really needs to match the texture a little better.  I would expect that the material settings for EyeSocket in your case are set to a simple color, and you can try applying the face material you're using to the EyeSocket as well.  Just save a single material for SkinFace, and then switch to EyeSocket and load the material you just saved; if the face texture map is not super anal it will likely cover the polygons at the border of EyeSocket also (like this one does).

Thanks for your tips, advice and preview render!  Regrettably there's only a "EyeSocket" material for the "inside of the lids" for David. :( The texture I'm using has an "EyeSocket" texture applied to it already -- however, by darkening the diffuse color to grey it seems to help. I may decide to make the grey a little more pinkish. I wish there was a way to make it a little more slightly wet though.

--R.

 

^^ that pic IS david, you should be able to get similar results :)

Oh sheepish sorry! :) I want to make sure I have this correct from your previous post. Are you saying apply the same texture for the face to the eyesocket as well? I'm trying that and it's still not blending very well. I'm not sure why, as that should've worked.

--R.

It is something easy to try, IF the texture you're working with spreads smoothly from the face skin polygons to the EyeSocket polygons - and if not, then it won't help, which seems to be the case.  You could try tweaking the texture around the eyelid area if you're confident of your skills to do that, or maybe somebody else has a better suggestion.

Yeah, there still seems to be a very well defined line between the eyes and the rest of the face. It doesn't look as smooth. I'll have to check the texture out soon. Perhaps I could use some of the clone tool or something around the eyes. It's a strange problem. Would an Edge_Blend node help anywhere? Thanks though! :)

--R.

Edge_Blend examines the camera angle, it doesn't look at the UV border of the polygons it's applied to - I wish there was a simple node like that actually.  I am pretty sure you could do something fancy with "U Texture Coordinate" and "V Texture Coordinate" nodes but my skills are not mad enough to show you exactly what.  One of the serious material gurus can probably tell you better.

Thanks for the explaination of the Edge_Blend node! Yeah, that would be great if they had a node like that. It would be great if there was nodes we could apply that would fix problem areas such as those. To give the eyes more wetness at the lower lid to achieve more realism. Thank you for your help anyways. :) Hopefully I'll find a solution soon. I'll experiment around and see if I can't get it to look better. If I get anything presentable, I'll post a preview :)

--R.

There probably is a solution, I just don't have it ;)  BagginsBill may have (probably does have) a better answer.

That's okay. :) Yes, I hope so. That's something I think that would bring out a lot more realism in renders, what we're discussing here and also somehow making the eye area (around the lids, and lower lashes) more specular. I suppose for around that area you could use a specular map for the "SkinHead" material. I'm not sure how the node experts figure out all of the complicated details but I'm glad they do.

--R.