i am modeling a womans face right now and am wondering what method is used by most to create eyes that can move? keep in mind i want a closed mesh too. thanks.

firt method I can think of is create a hollow and plonk a sphere in it, youll have intersecting geo but it can still be closed.

second method, animating the uvs of the eye texture, which could be tricky to find a way to animate.. I wouldnt know how to set that up with a look at object..

third way, you could create your eye geo fixed in place and part of the head, and create a seperate iris piece of geometry- and you animate that moving around ontop (have to be precise with the pivot point though..)

I've used first and third before, third sounds weird but it can work if you do it right. if its for real-time, one thing you can do is create an alphad 'shield' over the eye, and place the highlight (and shadow) on that- so that it doesn't rotate with the eye

Since you are going through that detail, I assume you'll have additional details such as blood vessels on the eye and small detailed curvatures and reflection differences.

Just drifing it over the surface of a sphere won't be convincing if you include details that level of detail. You'll need a model that can rotate, which means having a spheroid (or hemisphere or any other shape) embedded in the head. To be even more detailed, each eye will need to be independant so that it is possible to look at near things (cross-eyed) and far away things (nearly parallel).

Or, if your T&L can't handle the extra work for that transformation, just fake it with a few textures.

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Original post by red_produkt firt method I can think of is create a hollow and plonk a sphere in it, youll have intersecting geo but it can still be closed. second method, animating the uvs of the eye texture, which could be tricky to find a way to animate.. I wouldnt know how to set that up with a look at object.. third way, you could create your eye geo fixed in place and part of the head, and create a seperate iris piece of geometry- and you animate that moving around ontop (have to be precise with the pivot point though..) I've used first and third before, third sounds weird but it can work if you do it right. if its for real-time, one thing you can do is create an alphad 'shield' over the eye, and place the highlight (and shadow) on that- so that it doesn't rotate with the eye

thanks, it is for realtime but i also want a high level of detail (its for a portfolio project), so i'll probably go with the first method, that should allow a lot of flexibility.
thanks for the help.

p.s. i will keep in mind some of the other methods too for the future as they can be useful to.