Making eyes -- good reflections?

To get precisely the eye size and colour I want, I've resorted to making my own. My first set were okay, I guess, but I am now revisiting the process to make an improved version. I've got an iris I am pretty happy with, but the reflection I've got so far isn't quite as I want it. Looking at my own eyes in a mirror, they look a lot more sharply glassy and more liquid.

What sort of approaches do people tend to use for making the reflections? And do people tend to place them on the whites as well, or just on the iris?

Hi Freyja, it sounds like you are going for realism. Reflections are as diverse as the environment you are in. I would suggest finding a portable mirror and walking around indoors and outdoors under different lighting conditions to find a reflection you like. Once you find one, look at the color and detail of the surroundings and the position of the light source, then try to duplicate that. You can get very technical with it by rendering specularity and halo effects in a 3D app, then layering that over a texture mapped sphere, or you can just mess around with the tools in an application like Photoshop. You could also buy one of those reflective garden globes and photograph the whole reflection, then use various overlay techniques in Photoshop to combine it with your eye texture. There are many possibilities.

Ultimately, the texture that gets uploaded into SL will be no larger than 256x256 (not 512x512), and the reflection will be represented by no more than a fraction of that surface. Not that much information in the end. People will most likely see it from a good distance too. Keep this in mind when adding in small details such as reflections.

Thank you, Namssor.

What I've been doing so far for reflections is using the 'Glass' effect in EyeCandy, though I find it comes out a little too cloudy. I don't have access to any 3D software, but I'll try some of the things you suggested for 2D work.

You could also attach spheres to your avatar's eyeballs that are just slightly larger, place your eye texture on them and set it to light shininess (medium may be overkill, but is entirely up to you).

I find this method much easier and convincing than a static faux shine made into the texture itself. Especially when the eyes move around.

If your computer can handle it, you could go into your client debug settings and turn on real-time reflections. You'll be able to see reflections of objects off of anything that has any level of shininess turned on. That's as close to a simulated glassy eye you'll presently will ever get on SL.

Ah, that sounds like a bit much, but thanks.

I have seen eyes that I think do look pretty glassy with just painted on reflections, so I think I could get a result I'd be happy with if only I could figure out how to paint a reflection myself instead of relying on a plugin.

if you have the reflection you want, you could add it as a layer to the eye texture and turn down the opacity, make it a little transparent (it is how I would do it for reflections on a window)

and of course the spots that are lightened to make it like the major reflective spot

I did it the easy way and just took a picture. Of course, it helps that I have photography lighting to get the right soft of look for a portrait shot.

Is it just me or do eyes look really strange in windlight??

Depending on the contrast on the reflections, this is entirely possible. The sharper and higher contrast the reflection, the less this will be a problem. Of course, the balance to this is knowing just how to be tasteful about size and placement of said reflections.

A lot of people seem to have issues with how avs get 'washed out' in Windlight. Personally, it's a welcome change - things are far more realistic and light is way less blown out.

i'd like to give eyes a shot and have made NOTHING as far as textures go in SL. I have Gimp, Photoshop..etc etc..but would love a simple alpha texture to get me on the right path. There's one in SL but I cant get it out world. Never had a problem with pics doing that but I cant get those either. Is this a windlight thing? would anyone be willing to send me that simple template to get me started? Thanks

There used to be a template in the old collection of av templates, but it seems that was removed as LL opted to change to some better templates.

Nonetheless, making eye textures is pretty simple.

Start with a 256x256px image, create a circle about 1/3 the size of your image, in the exact middle. You can play around with the size a bit to get what you want, but this will be your iris. Keep in mind that the top of the eyeball is actually mapped to the left portion of the template, so if you wanna designate an 'up' to your eye texture, make sure it's applied to the left hand side of your image.

The rest is totally up to you!