theres tons of references for how the surface eye/eyelids look on a head, but I’m wondering about the anatomy, like what is the exact scale/shape of a human eyeball, whats it look like inset in a skull. im trying to set an eye in my model and it seems like its too small but if i scale it up it doesnt really fit in the eyelids the way id like. 
anyone know of a reference for this?
This is something that I have been digging into lately myself. I still haven’t been able to find or figure out any good rules of thumb.
Which is interesting, considering that the eyes are the single most important part of any character, in my opinion.
The entire eye/eyelid area is something I’m really trying to work out. it’s not easy.
If you search for ctscan eyeball slice on google, you can find some actual cross sections, but to be honest, they haven’t helped me too much, although I’m also trying to work out larger, yet still realistic looking eyes. I’d also imagine it can vary from person to person.
I’m really looking forward to hearing some input on this one.
hope this helps.
with eyelids the head is 5 eyes wide, also although the eye might look too small it probably is accurate, we have a tendency to see faces as simple geometric shapes and some distortion occurs in our perception.
also the shape of the eye is somewhat squashed front to back, nd don’t forget the bulge due to the cornea
see, yeah, it is 5 eyes wide. but thats only measuring the width of the visible eye. but that doesnt tell me how wide the actual physical eyeball is, including the rest hidden behind the skin/etc.
did you even look at the pictures i uploaded?
Um. ya. It doesn’t look accurate.
real bodies, real eye proportions
thanks dude
Wow, it’s incredible how small the eye looks in the otherwise empty socket.
Yeah, see, the reason I was kind of confused is I had a teacher who told us that the eye is pretty large inside the skull. He was wrong. lol.
When they say 5 eyes wide, are they talking about the widest part
of the head or to the outside of the eyebrow?
widest part of the head (excluding the ears i believe), also generally they mean eyes with eyelid so it includes the tear duct.
you know for a while I always used to rotate my eyes at a slight outward angle as looking straight on my character would appear cross-eyed, no matter how much I adjusted the model. Though this creates problems particularly with eye reflections.
I now realised that the eyes should be looking straight forward and not rotated in any way. It’s the proper blending of the tearduct that eliminates the cross-eyed look.
btw - great references spaceboy!
Thanks spaceboy…
Thats a big help to me…
Zeno i have been rotating my eyes slightly outward to, due to
the cross-eyed look i keep getting, so this will be helpful to know
that the eyes are indeed straight forward.
While we are on the subject i would like to add another question…
Do the eyes rotate from a perfect center?
I know there is a bulge on the front of the eye that causes the eyelids
to bulge when they rotate but it also seems like they may rotate from
a point towards the back instead of center… Any clue?
I’d imagine in real life the eyes rotate via muscles connected at the back covering the back half of the eyeball. these would contract back and forward pulling the eye against the socket flesh and rotating it, as the socket fits so close to the eyeball it can only move at a central pivot. In cg rotating from the center is the easiest solution for mimicking this.
The bulge would most likely be due to the shape of the cornea moving under the lid.
With rare exception, the distance between the base of the nose (nasal spine) and line of the mouth (generally the base of the upper teeth) is equal to the eye width (diameter of the eyeball).
Hope this helps,
Katherine Dewey
