Creating realistic eyes in Zbrush

Lifelover

Hello fellow creatives! I have created this thread because I have one question regarding texturing realistic eyes in Zbrush. For this purpose, I collected an image from infamous Rafael Grassetti who has breathed life into the following study. Does anybody have any clue how he achieved this effect on the eyes?

slosh

Raf also sculpted in a wet layer straight onto the eyeball to make it feel more organic and integrated with the skin and tear duct.  I have used that technique on low poly eyes and it really works well IMO.

Greg DAlessandro

slosh said:

Raf also sculpted in a wet layer straight onto the eyeball to make it feel more organic and integrated with the skin and tear duct.  I have used that technique on low poly eyes and it really works well IMO.

What do you mean by a wet layer?

slosh

Yourname942 said:

slosh said:

Raf also sculpted in a wet layer straight onto the eyeball to make it feel more organic and integrated with the skin and tear duct.  I have used that technique on low poly eyes and it really works well IMO.

What do you mean by a wet layer?

If you look at Raf's sculpt where the eyeball touches the lower eyelid, he sculpted a thin layer of "liquid" straight onto the eyeball to mimic the wet layer between an eyeball and the eyelid.  It gives it a moist look and really enhances the liveliness of the eyes.

battlecow

you put some geo to simulate the wetness/liquid between the eyeball and the eyelid.

Lifelover

slosh said:

Yourname942 said:

slosh said:

Raf also sculpted in a wet layer straight onto the eyeball to make it feel more organic and integrated with the skin and tear duct.  I have used that technique on low poly eyes and it really works well IMO.

What do you mean by a wet layer?

If you look at Raf's sculpt where the eyeball touches the lower eyelid, he sculpted a thin layer of "liquid" straight onto the eyeball to mimic the wet layer between an eyeball and the eyelid.  It gives it a moist look and really enhances the liveliness of the eyes.

How do you do that effect exactly?

FourtyNights

I've always added the wetness straight to the head textures, not modeling any extra pieces on top of it. Easier to rig eyelids/eyes. I've also seen some people modeling another transparent occlusion layer in front of the eye. It masks the excessive white area of the eyeball, and makes eyes fitting to the eyesockets better, and therefore it adds realism. But still, that also could (should) be achieved with SSAO or HBAO+ or something similar, than with an extra mesh.

Lifelover

Thank you all for your insightful responses. I'm definetely gonna try out your suggestions. Cheers!

musashidan

Also, once you've polypainted the eye you can mask by intensity and sculpt the mask as displacement which enhances the realism of the reflection. Here's an eye that I made in ZB recently as part of this creature. You can see the displacement effect that I'm talking about.

Lifelover

musashidan said:

Also, once you've polypainted the eye you can mask by intensity and sculpt the mask as displacement which enhances the realism of the reflection. Here's an eye that I made in ZB recently as part of this creature. You can see the displacement effect that I'm talking about.

Thank you so much, man! By the way. awesome Youtube tutorials.