The Xara Trompe L'Oeil Room  Page 7
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Select the rectangle then select the Mould Tool. Apply a Ceiling Perspective envelope to change the shape and fill to a wedge shape.

Enable Snap To Objects (press the red magnet icon on the Infobar). Select the iris circle, then drag a horizontal and vertical guideline from the screen rulers and snap them to the center of the iris.

Select the wedge shape. Click twice to enter rotate/skew mode and drag the rotation bulls eye to the center of the iris.

Manually rotate the wedge around the center point and press the right mouse button to drop duplicates as you rotate until you have filled the iris area. 

 

Select all the wedge shapes and group them. Send the wedges to the back (Ctrl B).

Make a duplicate of the iris shape. We'll need it in a few moments.

Select the wedge group and the iris shape and from the Arrange menu, select Combine Shapes > Intersect Shapes. The contents of the grouped wedges are now neatly trimmed to the shape of the iris circle.

This looks pretty cool, but I have never seen an iris this perfect. Not on a living person at any rate.

 

Select the duplicate iris circle and apply the same 2-color Fractal Clouds fill. But this time leave the fill path arrows at a 90 degree angle and drag the center of the fill around until you have a pattern similar to the one shown top left. I doubt if you will get the exact same pattern but basically we want a pattern that is darker in the center and lighter on the outside.

Position the new circle over the iris and apply a Circular, Luminous, Transparency. (I have moved the circle to the left so you can see the effect over white and over the colored area. The iris in the lower right shows the final effect. Now that looks more random and more like a real live iris.

The cornea is a rounded, transparent lens that sits on top of the iris and focuses images onto the retina in the inside, back portion of the eye. Because of its shape, the cornea reflects any light source it encounters.

We'll add two highlights to the cornea to add depth and glossiness.

Create two circles as shown. Apply Circular, Mix Transparency to each. Reposition the center of the circular fill to the upper left portion of the highlights.

Add a 1.2 pixel feathering to each highlight by modifying the Change the size of the Feathering Region (Couldn't Xara just have called it Feathering?) slider on the top right portion of the Infobar.

Finally, just as the pupil is not a hard shape, neither is the outer edge of the iris a hard shape.

We can add a 2 point circular outline and feather the outline to soften the edge of the iris.

Draw an 86 pixel circle. Set the outline weight to 2 points and the fill to none. Change the outline color to the color shown. Apply 2 pixels of feathering.

Save your drawing and have a tiny morsel of something to eat. These tutorials are very strenuous and burn a lot of calories!