Making an Eye

When creating an eye in 3d there are usually two approaches. First one is just to create a sphere and apply an eye texture to it. This gives a more comic look, but the drawback is that there is no depth in the eye, thus making whole model feel shallow (some would say without a soul). Second approach, the one which we will be explaining here, is to make fully 3d eye, just like Pixar does in their movies. So, let’s begin.

Create a sphere with a radius of 100 units and 64 segments. Than right click on it and convert it to editable poly. Change its color to white.

Select and delete polygons as shown in the picture. This will be our eyeball.

Select the edge rim of the just deleted polygons.

While holding the Shift key pressed, scale the edge inwards and than move it towards the inside of the eye to complete the iris.

Shift scale the edge again to make a pupil.

Now, select the polygons that were on the edge that we just scaled, right click on them and choose Collapse. This will combine all those vertices into one vertex and we will get a nice uninterrupted pupil.

Next, select and detach the pupil from the main model and than do the same with the iris. Also give the pupil a black color and the iris a color of your own choosing.

Now, create another sphere which radius is as big as the radius of the iris and with 32 segments. Position it so that half of it is outside the eyeball.

Select and delete the polygons that are inside the eyeball.

Scale it down a single axis (in this case the Y axis) to flatten it a little bit.

As a final step, add a transparent material to the sphere to complete the cornea.

Note: In this tutorial we have concentrated on the modeling process of the eye and as for the materials, they will probably be explained in an another tutorial.