Saturday, February 8, 2014

Eye Piece

The latest in my ever increasing assortment of body parts.

55 comments:

  1. It's beautiful. amazing!!! The eyelashes seem to pull to the side as the eyeball moves... Out of curiosity, how many morph maps are you using, what are you using for the hairs, and how long did it take to render?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Simon - there are 5 open/close morphs for the eyelids, two for lower lid squints, 3 for eyebrows and one or two corrective morphs. Bones are controlling the lids as well. The lashes and eyebrow hairs are hand-placed geometry, the peach fuzz is Fiber FX. It was rendering almost non-stop for about a month...

      Delete
    2. If you want to crowd render, I can volunteer a few i7s, just let me know! BTW it's gone viral on facebook here in Brazil...

      Delete
  2. This is absolutely beautiful work. The life that is in that eye is amazing. And is very convincing even in this close up take.

    Please tell me how you do it?...

    -I assume you are using displacement map for the skin detail. What size of disp. map and is it 32 bit?

    -Also, are the deformation wrinkles driven by tension maps or is a connection (set driven key in maya) between the maps and the blendshape morph target?

    -How much time it take you?

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Diogo - the finer skin detail is a 4096 x 4096 16 bit bump map, displacements are 2048 x 2048 16 bit.

      The wrinkles are driven by tension for the most part, but there are a couple of areas that are driven directly by the morph controllers.

      This particular test took roughly 3-4 weeks, not including rendering, but the whole human project has been underway for a year or two now (although I used an earlier attempt from many years prior as a starting point).

      Delete
    2. Hey Chris.

      Thank you very much for the answer. Can you help me with a few more questions please....

      -I heard in a lightwave webinar video that you were working in another short film. When is going to be done?...., will it has realistic characters, like the human project?.. anything else that you can share about the project?

      -And i forgot to ask you in what render did you render this great eye?

      -Have you consider share or sale one of this truly amazing human project works like this eye piece?....or in any case make a video tutorial?

      Thanks

      Delete
    3. 1. I am? You'll have to point me towards that video so I can find out what it's about! :P I have considered the possibility of doing one, but they're difficult things to rationalise. If I did though it would most likely feature characters derived from the human project.

      2. LW's renderer

      3. Considered, yes. Decided... no.

      Delete
    4. Hey Chris.
      I saw the video long time ago, it was one of those live stream videos i think from Siggraph hosted by the guys of lightwave but i don`t know which video.... it was i think on Ustream.....

      But English is not my language so i may have heard the sentence wrong....., but they do mention the great work that you made in the "passenger" short.

      Delete
    5. Possibly, or they might have misinterpreted something I said... You could say my recent tests are pre-production for a short - I just haven't decided whether to follow through on the rest of it yet. ;)

      Delete
  3. Chris, can you tell a little about the tech side of this. You left a thank you for the 'rendering power' and I'd like to know more about that!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A friend helped out with the rendering on his new PC, which is almost twice as fast as my 5 year old relic. We had to swap the workload back and forth between the two, since that was quicker than it would have been trying to get LW's network rendering to work!

      Delete
    2. Dude how dare you use such a old pc open a donation account on paypal

      Delete
  4. Replies
    1. hi! your work truly is amazing! how long did that take you to do? I'm 12 and into the arts, and I was considering doing something along these lines, but currently I'm working mainly on paintings, but this does look VERY interesting (understatement of the year) and I already know I'm crazy, but the music somehow inspired me to do this weird painted that got a high grade, maybe it's just me, I makes me work much harder than I thought I could, I was trying to look for the track everywhere (repeating the YouTube video over and over again was alright, but it gets very annoying after time ;)

      P.S; don't let anyone tell you your work isn't good enough.

      - Natasha :)

      Delete
    2. I've been working on the whole human project for years, but this test was done in about 3-4 weeks (plus a month of rendering).

      That's all there is of the music unfortunately - it's custom made just for this video. I could revisit and make a complete track out of it, but there are about a thousand other things I want to do as well. Maybe if the demand is strong enough...

      Here's a link to the mp3 anyway - you'll be able to get annoyed by it without having to play it in YouTube at least. ;) Glad to hear it's helping with your art (your painting skills will definitely come in handy if you want to do 3D by the way)!

      Delete
    3. WOW that long? Some people thought it took you months :)
      Don't worry about how long the track is, I didn't expect it to be too long :D
      You don't need to make the track any longer if it's too pressuring on you :)
      You sound a bit like my dad, except my dad doesn't really talk to me ^-^("i have thousands of other things to do natasha.....")

      I'm not annoyed at all about repeating it, there's a setting on my music player that just repeats it by itself :)

      Phew no need for wi fi to play it over and over! :)

      I'm not the type of 12 year old who only gets encouraged by miley cyrus's music(what has our generation become :0 ) but I do like Coldplay :D

      I also heard your song 'a carol of bells'.... and the result......




      You're very responsible for blpwing my mind ~>.<~

      Delete
  5. Fantastic work, Chris! The attention to detail is beautiful. I began working on a similar eye project in January (single shot pulling back from iris micro-level to eye exterior). Just wanted to let you know that this piece gave me another burst of motivation to keep pushing my work further :)

    I recall loving your short film 'The Passenger' years ago when it first came out and since then I had lost touch with what you were working on. Pleasantly surprised to discover this piece was done by you!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Chris,

    I would suggest trying Amleto for a render farm. I use it for my four machines here.

    This is just amazing work. For years, the telltale "this is CGI" giveaway for eye shots was the lack of the wetness, the surface-tension meniscus between the eyeball and the lower eyelid. You *nailed* it.

    And you did it in Lightwave. That's just icing on the cake.

    Incidentally, I found this via a "Sploid" link (Gawker Media blog), on the off chance you noticed a traffic spike recently...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll look into Almeto next time I have access to a farm - thanks. The meniscus was one of the easier parts to do, funnily enough.

      Delete
  7. My God this take is breathless, this is the only shot I absolutely think it was real. Congratulations Chris your´re the boss.

    ReplyDelete
  8. @ jarombrand, Jake N., Sem Limites & Anonymous - thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great job ! Excellent in fact ! If i can say something about it : Everything seems real to me, except, maybe, the eyelid on 0'2" to 0'3"..I think it's about the light on it or the eyelashes ?...
    It's a veryvery small detail in this fabulous work, but i noticied it, so..
    OK, sorry for my bad english and the azardous google trad . :)
    FAb

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Considering there are at least a dozen things wrong with it that I can see, I'd say I got away with murder in that case. ;)

      Delete
  10. Awesome job! Chris did everything you modeled in lightwave3D?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes indeedy (except the bits I sculpted in Sculptris).

      Delete
  11. Bloody hell, that is brilliant work! Very inspiring.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Complimenti!!!! si puo avere un tutorial :-)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Chris, brilliant work

    how did you got about figuring out how to do the eye, in terms of mesh construction, shader networks etc. i.e. is there a tutorial you used or was it all through trial and error?

    Thank you
    John

    ReplyDelete
  14. It was trial and error for the most part, with a few things adapted from tutorials/forum posts. Follow the links in this thread to see how some of my R&D played out.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Really impressive work! How did you do deformation of eyelids with cornea?

    ReplyDelete
  16. Amazing;
    I can't see the difference with a real one.
    nevertheless, at 10s, have you noticed the light passing through the backside of the eyeball?
    Can this happen in reality?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks - there's a problem with the skin shader that causes it to glow when it intersects other objects. At 10s that happens a little bit where the eyeball touches the caruncle... could that be what you're referring to?

      Delete
    2. Exactly!
      As it happened when the eye was looking to the light source, I was not sure it was a rendering problem; I wondered if it could happen for real with a powerfull light.
      And thank you for I learned a new word :caruncle!

      Delete
  17. I have been passing on this video to all that are willing to look. Wonderful. Thank You.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Super unrealistically hyperrealistic. I accidentally found your website whilst looking for inspirations for a short sequence. And I'm absolutely loving this site; you must be an insanely nice person. (Great useless info page for the Passenger) This video makes it even better. Thanks for the crazy work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you have enjoyed it. Not sure about insanely nice... nicely insane perhaps. ;)

      Delete
  19. hi chris jones, I happened to be a big fan of yours, like there many!
    this is just something I'd like to achieve, I am 20 years old today, working as an architectural visualizer and it's been 2 years, not so great into it since I accidentally landed up into this field due to lack of guidance, yeah I know it sounds strange but just forget it, maybe it's my stupidity. I always wanted to make things like these! I imagine such animations and vfx in my dreams and have alot of concepts in mind. I'd just like to learn something like this, so it's just very important for me to talk to such godlike master like you! please give me some tips if possible, like how and from where should I begin! to enter into this field. thanks alot for inspiring all of us and if you read this message already! Love you man! thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kartik,

      Well I didn't start 3D until I was 21 since the tools weren't available to me yet, so you have a couple of years head start on me (not so stupid after all, eh). In short, look online for beginner tutorials covering the areas you're interested in, and perhaps ones on general drawing/painting theory if you don't have skills in that area already. It's a very broad topic though so you might want to send me an email if you want more specifics.

      Delete
    2. chris jones!!!

      I am seriously glad that you just replied to my message! thank you so much you just made my day! not gonna drag it more but I am happy!
      I couldn't find your email address, kartikreddy32@gmail.com is my email address please can you drop me a "hi" to me if that's okay.
      i would love to get into it. you just made my dream come true! thanks alot again!

      Delete
    3. I emailed you a few days ago. please check your email. :)

      Delete
  20. Your work is awesome, how do you did the deformations?, scanned expressions turned in blendshapes or all are native deformations from the software?. Really awesome work

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No scans, just hand modelled shapes (morphs), bones and hand painted wrinkles driven by tension.

      Delete
  21. Master blaster your work . really awesome work������

    ReplyDelete
  22. Very nice! I love it. what software did you use for all these works?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LightWave, Sculptris and Krita. Everything after last year is Blender instead of LW.

      Delete
  23. Hi Chris ,I saw your eye animation and it caught my eye(no puns intended).
    Love your Blender work :)

    ReplyDelete