Mirroring and Adjusting the Eyes

We’ve made one eyeball, but Jim needs two of them! First, you need to align the existing eyeball to one of the eyes in the background image. Keep in mind that as the lattice is now deforming the eyeball, you’ll need to select both eyeball and lattice to move them together. To create the second eyeball, you’ll duplicate and mirror the first one (see Figure 7.6).

Figure 7.6 Aligning the eyeball (left), mirroring a second eyeball (center), and the result in 3D (right)

Here are the steps to adjust and mirror the eye:

1. Select the eyeball and the lattice.

2. Move and scale them to adjust them to the shape and size of the drawn eye in the front view. Adjust their position in the side view as well. Don’t worry if they don’t fit perfectly.

3. Once the first eye is aligned, make sure you place the 3D cursor in the center of the scene. You can press Shift + S and select the option of Cursor to Center, or you can press Shift + C.

4. Press Shift + D to duplicate the eyeball and its lattice. Right click to cancel the movement and this will leave the new eyeball and lattice in the same exact location as the originals.

5. Press . (period) on your keyboard to set the pivot point in the 3D cursor.

6. Press Ctrl + M to enter Mirror Mode. This will make the current pivot point the mirror plane (that’s why you should use the 3D cursor for mirroring; otherwise, you’d be mirroring from the selection’s origin). Remember to set the pivot point to Median Point (Ctrl + ,) or to Bounding Box Center (,) before you continue working.

7. Once in Mirror Mode, you can press X, Y, or Z to select the axis of the mirror. In this case, press X and the new eyeball and its lattice should move right into place (see Figure 7.6). Press Enter to confirm this action.