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There are several ways to create eyelashes in 3D such as using Maya Fur, Joe Alter's Haircut and
a Shave plugin or using textures with transparency maps. All of these work well, but I've found
using geometry the best solution because it doesn't require plugins, and your lighting, shadows,
reflections and refractions will always match, since you are using the same rendering engine as the
geometry.
To make things easy I'm providing the Maya file which you can use in conjunction with this
tutorial. The eye is modeled with Sub-Ds and you'll need to use Maya 4.5 or higher to open it.

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CREATING A SINGLE EYELASH

First of all we need to create one complete lash that we will duplicate along the eyeline.
Once the file is loaded up create a poly cylinder with 5 subdivision axis sections.

Hit the Insert key (on your keyboard) and vertex snap the pivot point of the cylinder to the bottom
middle vertex (hold down the v key while clicking the vertex with the MMB. Then hit Insert again to
get out of pivit-point mode).

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In the side view move, scale, and rotate the cylinder into position on the edge of the top eyelid so
it looks something like this:

Using a Maya 5 feature we are going to extrude the end faces of this cylinder along a curve. If you
are using an earlier version of Maya you'll need to extrude and scale the end faces a few times to
get the shape of the lash.
Create a curve in the shape of the lash at the end of the cylinder.

Right-click on the cylinder and select Face. Select the end faces of the cylinder then shift-select
the curve.

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Go Edit Polygons > Extrude Face.

want to make this as low as possible) and Taper to 0.

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DERIVING A CURVE
Now that we have created our lash we need another curve to duplicate it along. We need to create a
NURBS surface to derive the curve since we can not derive it from the Sub-D surface.
Select the eye surface and go to Modify > Convert > Subdiv to NURBS. Make sure Original Object
is set to Show and hit Convert.
Hide Subdiv surfaces (Show > Subdivision Surfaces) and delete all the Nurbs Surfaces except for
the innermost patch.

In component mode select the 3rd Isopalm from the outer edge and go Edit Curves > Duplicate
Surface Curves.

Now we need to attach the lash to to the curve.

DUPLICATING ALONG THE CURVE

Select the eyelash shift-select the curve then go Animation > Paths > Attach to Motion Path.
These are the settings I used:

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In the channel box for motionPath1 you'll need to keyframe Front Twist to make sure the eyelash
is pointing the right direction for the 200 frames. This image shows us where I made the
keyframes for the Front Twist:

Now that we have keyframes for our lash pointing in the right direction along the curve it is time to
make sure the lashes are the right size along the curve so we will set some keyframes on the scale
of the lash.
Select the lash and make about 5 keyframes for the scale of the lash (Shift-R) - IE big lashes on
the top eyelid and small ones on the bottom
OK now we're ready to duplicate the eyelashes along the curve. To make this part easier we can
use a simple MEL script. In the script editor type:
select pCylinder1; // Select the original lash
duplicate; // Duplicate the lash
rotate -r (rand(-5,5)) (rand(-5,5)) (rand(-5,5)); // Rotate randomly
playButtonStepForward; // Go forward one frame
Then select and MMB-drag it onto your shelf to make a button.
Move the timeslider to where you want to create a lash then press your button. The script also
adds some random rotation to your lashes and goes forward a frame. Use the g key to repeat the
command. Move the timeslider back and fourth pressing the g key, putting lashes where you want
them until you are happy with the result.

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You could further randomize the lashes by scaling and rotating them.

ATTACHING THE EYELASHES

Now we can merge all the lashes into one polygon object and attach them to the motion path curve.
Delete the original eyelash and eyelash curve (not the motion path), then put the NURBS surface
on a Layer and turn visibility off.
Select all the lashes by typing this in the command line:
select "polyCylinder*";
Then go Polygons > Combine
Go to Deform > Wire Tool, select the lashes, press enter, then select the motion path and press
enter. In the channel box of the lashes scroll down to wire1 and set dropoff distance to 10. Now
you can put the curve in the Layer with visibility off.
Turn on Sub-ds again (Show > Subdivision Surfaces) and try moving the points on the sub-d
eyelid. You'll see the lashes stick to the eyelids thanks to the magic of Maya's history on the
curve.

For hi-res shots you might want to try polysmoothing the lashes.
And that's it. Congratulations you've made it!
Tom Bardwell - www.screamingghost.com

FILES FOR DOWNLOAD

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