Character eyes are black

Question

I made a pair of eyes for a character of mine that consists of two meshes. One that acts as the real eye with the iris and the pupil, and then a copy of that one but slightly different to represent a cornea which has only a simple glass shader on. Why are the eyes of my character dark as soon as I place them inside the eye sockets? Seriously, you can barely see them. Can anyone tell me why Blender does this?

Eye out of socket:

Eye inside socket:

From a distance you can't see it's eyes at all, only if you're this close can you make them out.

Blend file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vj7jwmcu7sn7bej/Dark%20Eyes.blend?dl=0

It became a bit clearer but it's still too dark. I wanted them to be vibrant, almost like sapphires. — , Sep 07 '18 at 21:12
You probably need to pack the textures into the .blend, can't see them. EDIT: whoops, sorry, it seems only the World-HDR image was missing. — Manu Järvinen, Sep 07 '18 at 22:34
For me it looks like only a lighting-issue. More light to the eye-side should be enough. — Manu Järvinen, Sep 07 '18 at 22:40

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 08 '18 at 09:48

It is hard to see it all without all the pictures packed (or I just don't have HDR activated), or that the head is lacking materials. However, I myself have had a few troubles in regards to things being not lit the way I like it. One of the things involves having specularity spots on eyes even in a dimly lit room. The two options I came up with was having "virtual lights" (spot and point) surrounding the face, and having a starfield texture added as emission.

I have played around a bit with your node setup, and what I've come up with is that from the Mix node that is connected to the Principled's Base Color, add a connection to a Bright/Contrast node, connect that to an Ambient Occlusion shader, and then an Add shader that adds together the Principled and Ambient outputs to the Material Output.

With the Bright/Contrast node you can control how bright/vibrant you want your eye, seeing as AO (and Add) doesn't have a slider for how much it affects the material. If you want a "strength slider" for the shader, or don't mind the eye emitting some light, you can exchange the AO shader for an Emission shader.

Hope this helps.

This did help and now I can see the eye clearly but it looks flat. — , Sep 09 '18 at 22:29
At least it is a start. Play around with what I've given you, exchange or add some nodes, or connect them differently. Hopefully you'll achieve the result you are looking for. — Edward, Sep 09 '18 at 22:44

Character eyes are black

1 Answers1