So I've been working on texture maps and morphs for La Femme. I noticed a circle around her iris in my test renders. At first I chalked it up to

"Well my materials are a hodgepodge right now, probably just needs and iris mask to limit specular or SSS or something. I'll get to that when I start finalizing materials."

I took a closer look at La Femme's eye construction and noticed a rather strange transition of polys from the sclera to iris material zones. A very unsmooth transition. So I thought

"hmph. Her eyes are rather low poly at base resolution maybe a level of subdivision will clear up that line."

So I cranked up a level of subdivision on her eyes and rendered. Same line was there.

I concluded that it's the materials and continued working in photoshop.

Anyway, I take a look at some of the character sets in the marketplace and noticed that the line artifact is present in many marketplace products.

I also noticed in my purchases that the couple of characters I've gotten for her do not include an iris mask.

I also also noticed that the characters that do NOT have this artifact in promo renders appear to have the iris textures expanded beyond the iris material zone into the sclera zone, in effect camouflaging the artifact at that transition of polys.

Note that the artifact effect also shows with La Femme Pro's base materials. I haven't done any 'just maps, no shaders' tests yet to discern whether this is a geometry or shader problem.

Anyone know the whys or wherefores of this eye flaw?

Here's a marketplace product promo capture that shows the artifact I'm referring to... it's rampant in commercial products and I think some might be post working it away... I'm hoping there's a simple solution, eg. a mask or expanding the iris texture or even a shader adjustment. In any case I'm speculating and curious...

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