I have a few models I wanted to make some hypno stuff with it. But I ran into 2 issues;

1) The eyes were unmoveable, there are sliders for the eye lids and eye expression, but the irises can not be moved from left to right or up and down.

2) As such the eyes also seem not to have a dedicated eyeball texture. Usually there is eyeball_l and eyeball_r. But not with these models. Its either baked into the face texture itself OR when there is an eye texture. The material override refers to an VMT file instead in the same folder, and adding $iris does nothing.

How do other SFM artists deal with this? I would like to use these kinds of model as sometimes they're the only models, but without being able to change the eyes, many ideas fall flat or simply impossible.

Now yes I could probably paint over them in post, but it would look very weird as I am not skilled enough to do that as of yet.

Another option I saw used for this kind of thing is a different model you'd fit over the eyes, if you have the means to do That, or the attachment model already exists.

Among other things, it definitely exists on other models you used before, so if you can rip those out cleanly and fit them over the character model you want... fat chance, I know, but it's an option.

With a budget, you can pay someone to make a new one for you. Cheaper than commissioning a whole character model from scratch, at least.

Of course, SFM being what it is, the more extras you add the more chances there are for things to break in bizarre and unpredictable ways.

I must admit I don't know what fitting a different model over the eyes means here so I'll have to look into that.

Unfortunately I don't have the budget to commission anything really, money is tight at the moment.

Luckily however, at least for 1 model. I found a semi okay-ish workaround. Lucky enough that, that model has a seperate eye texture and the VMT file refers to that texture. So it's just a matter of replacing that file. But eyes that are baked in the headwrap (idk what else to call it) still need some figuring out.