Blender and Character Eyes

I've got a character done with subsurface modeling in Blender that I'd like to print. The main mesh is manifold except for the eye socket; the eyes are two UVspheres.

Is there an easy way to deal with this situation? Union creates a mess even if I apply the subsurf modifier beforehand. It would probably require several hours of tweaking to get the welding right - any automatic joining deforms the visible part of the eyeball.

It seems like this would have to be a problem somebody's figured out, so thought it was worth asking.

Thanks.
Jeff

Hi Jeff;

what I have been doing is just deleting the eyes all together and then closing the eye socket. On most models this is sufficient as the detail is too small to discern. Here is my Female Centaur with a close up of the 'eyes' to illustrate.



I also delete fingernails, toenails, Teeth, etc etc.

Hope that helps.

That's a good idea for small scale realistic figures. This piece I'm experimenting with is a cartoon character with pretty big eyes, though, so if I close up the sockets like that, it's going to look scary.

What scale is that piece, by the way?

Ahh, I see. Well, how I would approach the problem is to manually stich things together then. It can be a laborious process, but you get good results.

Start by getting the eye socket and the eye trimmed down. what you're looking to do is concentrate on what will be the outter surface. That way when you stitch things together you'll have a good idea as you go along what the end result will be. Keep in mind, how you actually approach this methodology is tottally dependent on how you model is constructed.

The Eyes and the Eye socket need to be trimmed to where we are only dealing with the outter most surface.

So if you eye is a full sphere, you will need to cut in half along the first set of vertices on the outside of the eye socket. And the same it true for your eye socket.

So you would have something like this:



(Please forgive the woefully lame model, I just tossed it together to make this mini tute. :blush: )

Now for stitching it together, you have several options.

You could just do a loop select of the base of the eye and socket and hit {SHIFT+F} and Blender will perform a very rudimentary closing of the open space. Be warned, although this is a time saver, the results are usually very poor, and I have actually seen it leave non-manifold edges for you to deal with. To have better symmetry, manually stitching by selecting 3 or 4 Verts and the hitting {F} to create a face is the best way to go about it. Wash rinse, and repeat till you have stitched the two meshes together into one manifold object.

I'd post more pictures but your only allowed one now. (At least I am. hehe)

If this doesn't make sense, then shoot me a note and I'll make send some more pics to better illustrate the process.

Oh, and the Centaur, she is 180.229mm tall from hoof to the tip of her hair. And 147.978mm long from her hands to her tail.