Iris Texture

I would just like to share the cool Iris making technique I learned the other day.

Modeling
1. Create a Circle and Rename it "Pupil"
2. Extrude the edges of the pupil out a short distance.
3. Select the Extruded Part of the pupil and separate it into a new mesh. Rename this Mesh "Iris"
4. Scale up the Pupil Object slighty. This will create the black ring around the outside of the Iris.

Materials
1. Create a new Black Material and apply it to the Pupil Object. Make it "shadeless" so that light does not affect it.
2. Create a new Color Ramp Material and apply it to the Iris Object. 3 Colors in the gradient look nice.

Particles
1. Add a Particle system of type "Hair" to the Iris Object. Bump up the Normals Size to "Grow the Hairs".
2. Invert the normals on the Iris object. This will make the normals go in towards the pupil, thus making the "Hair" grow towards the center of the eye.

Lighting/Camera
1. Make the camera directly face the front of the Iris object.
2. Place the camera in "Orthogonal" mode.
3. Scale up the Eye Objects (Iris/Pupil) so that they fill the whole camera viewport.
4. Snap a lamp to the same position as the camera

Rendering
1. Render Image and smile at your Iris Texture.

I'll show some fully rendered eyes with their whole setup soon.