Making Eyes from a Source Image - A Tutorial by Zombie Jill

click to go to Page Three of the tutorial.

step SIX.
darken the pupil to a full black, and add shadowing along the top of the iris.

This step seriously adds a 3D feel to the iris. Using the burn tool (Midtones, about 20%-30%), make your brush the size of your pupil, and repeatedly click until it's black. Then, make your brush a bit bigger, and make a shadow along the top of the iris, following the circular shape of the iris and of the eye itself, like it's 3D. You can make it as shaded or un-shaded as you want (to match your base, mostly). I like shadowy eyes of DOOM, so, I made my shadows quite dark.

step SEVEN.
refine your highlights, then add contrast to the overall iris. sharpen again.

Use the Sharpen tool to sharpen the highlights even more. Then, using the dodge tool (switching between Midtones and Highlights, between 10%-30%), make the highlights brighter. Add contrast to the iris by 'dodging' the iris near the bottom, as shown. Do it as much as you feel you need to; but be careful not to burn out the detail! Sharpen again. (Note: In the picture, I ended up sharpening it too much, so I undid the step and continued on. XD Just so you know.)

step EIGHT.
load the textures into bodyshop, and see how (they) look. modify positioning as needed.

AAAH. XD; Typo. Why did I start this tutorial at two in the morning. I went to bed right after this step, btw. ANYWAY. Load the textures into bodyshop and see what needs adjusting. What I did on mine: I raised the iris texture up a few pixels, and shrunk the iris texture just a bit, so the black underneath was more visible. NOTE: Pupils are NOT right in the center of your eye! Positing the pupil so it's dead-center in the sims' eye makes it look... odd. Push it up a few pixels; it seriously does amazing things. It makes your sim seem like they're actually looking at something, as opposed to just looking off into space. Amazering.

step NINE.
seperate the highlights from the iris, making them a new layer.

Select your Lasso tool, and set the edge to feathered by, ooh... two or three pixels. Select your iris roughly, then copy and paste it to a new layer. Put that layer ABOVE your iris layer. As you can see, I'm naming all my layers; it's not necissary for this particular project, but, if you have a lot of layers, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND IT. I also recommend groups, just to make your life easier.

step TEN.
make your highlights grayscale. use the circle tool to define the pupil.

With your new highlights layer selected, go to the image, adjustments, hue/saturation menu, and make your highlights grayscale. Then, select the Elipse Shape tool. Position your cursor in the center of the pre-existing pupil, and hold shift, and begin to drag out your circle. Press and hold alt (so you're holding shift+alt, while still clicking) and make the pupil the side you want. This'll drag the circle out from the central point, as opposed to using that point as a corner.