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Asym Sclera

asym sclera.png

Required Tools for this Tutorial:
* Midori's Asym Eyes Framework: https://www.xivmodarchive.com/modid/20415
* Textools 3.0
* Penumbra Transaction is not necessarily required, but it does make life a lot easier. I will be using it in this tutorial.

Notes:

  • This will work on all races/genders/faces, however my example will use Male Xaela Face 1.
  • You cannot do this specific process without the Asym Eyes framework by Midori.
  • If you just want both sclera to be black, I have a mod already available for everyone: https://www.xivmodarchive.com/modid/110516
  • This is achievable in Penumbra with this same base mod we are using, through editing the constants within the material file, but this is not an accessible method right now. I would not recommend this method unless you have experience adjusting Atramentum Luminis values in Endwalker. The Material Editing Kit has not been updated for DT and is unlikely to come back before Atramentum Luminis does, so I will not be covering editing these values in Penumbra for now. 
  • I will not cover Penumbra Transaction or Textools installation in this guide , but I will link to some resources that go over it. While Penumbra is in beta, you are responsible for your own mod usage and breakage, use these tools at your own risk.
  • Midori's Framework splits the Vanilla eyes into two seperate models, and allows for two seperate materials and therefore, asym eyes, meaning you can have different texturres. ''IRI A'' material will only affect the left eye and ''IRI B'' will only affect the right eye. Please make sure you read their notes on the mod page about installing custom eye textures.

Resources:

 

So what's the deal with the Iris shader, and how did you get the eye whites to look black/white/funny other colour without a texture edit?


Due to changes in the Iris shader in Dawntrail, it's now possible to adjust the colour of sclera without using textures. In Endwalker, the Iris shader was a lot more limited, and dynamic catchlights were not possible, that is until Dawntrail where the shader catchlights follow the light source. Of course this means we lost our custom static catchlights, but we gained so much from the change, and I want to talk about one of the constants in the Iris shader in particular - 11C90091 aka eye white colour.

Textools Iris Shader Constants Editor:

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Let's Get Started

 

Step 1:

Our first job is to enable the Penumbra Transaction system so we can easily see our changes in game without needing to log in and out. I have made a new folder called Asym Sclera for this tutorial, and I will be connecting to that folder inside my Penumbra mod repo.

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Step 2:

With Penumbra Transaction ready, I am installing the Asym Eyes Framework, for this tutorial I am only editing Male Xaela face 101, so I am going to ignore the other asym Male Au'ra faces.

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You will know the transaction has been successful if the Transaction Manager populates with a bunch of files, along with the "Import Complete" notification within Textools itself. 

Step 3:

From here, we go to the left hand menu of Textools, and go to "Character" > "Face" > "(Your race and gender here)" > "(Your face here)"
So for me, I am going to Character, and then Face, and then Male Au'Ra and then to face 101.

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Step 4:

Now we can start editing the sclera!
Some notes on how to understand how the shader works - the 3 values 1/2/3 correlate to RGB, and I'm guessing value 4 might be an alpha value, but you don't need to worry about that. What we're mainly looking at is the RGB in order to set one eye black and the other white. Right now the default Xaela sclera is set to 0.3 x 0.3 x 0.3 which results in that dark greyish colour that's unique to them. We are only editing the white eye colour today, so this is the only value I will show edited.

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In order to edit this constant, we need to enter into the shader constants, and luckily for us, there's a big button with Shader Constants on it. This is what we need to access and edit. 

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In order to get black sclera, we need to set all 3 values to 0.
For white, what I found best on Male Xaela was 0.7 on all 3 values, but your mileage may vary, be prepared to tinker. It took me 30 minutes to find a shade for my OC (fem viera) because it's a very finicky value set and not every gender/race/face share values, some races vary differently to the others, Au'ra especially.

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Now with all 3 values set to 0 on the Iris A material, the left eye will gain a black sclera after we confirm in the shader constants page and then save the change to Penumbra.

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Save to Penumbra and watch yourself automatically redraw in live time!

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Step 5:

Now we can edit the other Iris material. For this I'm going for a white look. As stated above, I'm going to use the value 0.7 for all 3 values, but your mileage may vary, have a fuck around and find out what looks best for you. Make sure you note down your original values just in case you need to reset. We basically repeat step 4, but we're using the different, higher, value and instead of editing Iris A, we are editing Iris B.

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And Finished!

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And yes, you can do any colour you want really, as long as you're working in the RBG space, the world is your oyster.

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If you have any questions or need more clarification, or if a video tutorial would be additionally useful, I can be contacted on the site formerly known as Twitter at @serenity_viator

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