Rotating oblong eyeballs

[eunuchbot]

hey what about keeping the eye "ball" stationary and floating or moving the iris and color around? just a thought, i'm not sure it wold work

[Iain McFadzen]

Set up the eyes and eyelids as spheres, align a dummy to the pivot point of each eye and link everything up, then bind each eye and corresponding eyelid to an FFD spacewarp and link the spacewarps to the dummy. You can now use the FFD box to make the eyes oval, but the eyes will rotate underneath the FFD so they'll stay oval in the same alignment (if you get what I mean). It'll work just as well if your eyelids are part of the head mesh rather than separate objects.

[3rd Dimentia]

If you use the technique described by Mr McFadzen you can also animate the shape of the eyes by using FFD selects and linked Xforms to dummies on the spacewarp. Then animate the dummies to make the eye shapes. This way you can get cartoony expressive eyes. If that's what you are looking for. Then you link the dummies to the head. Make sure you linked Xform all the control points of the FFD so none of them get left behind when the head moves. And don't link the FFD directly to the head if using this technique or you will get double motion.

Stack:

linked Xform
FFDselect
linked Xform
FFDselect
FFD spacewarp

[Mahlon]

Originally posted by Iain McFadzen
Set up the eyes and eyelids as spheres, align a dummy to the pivot point of each eye and link everything up, then bind each eye and corresponding eyelid to an FFD spacewarp and link the spacewarps to the dummy. You can now use the FFD box to make the eyes oval, but the eyes will rotate underneath the FFD so they'll stay oval in the same alignment (if you get what I mean). It'll work just as well if your eyelids are part of the head mesh rather than separate objects.

I wonder if somehting like this would work on a neck setup as well. Been having problems losing volume when the neck turns. Guess a straight FFD modifier on verts set to react to the neck motion would be enough....hmmmm :rolleyes: just thinking....

Mahlon

[GRMac13]

Originally posted by Iain McFadzen
Set up the eyes and eyelids as spheres, align a dummy to the pivot point of each eye and link everything up, then bind each eye and corresponding eyelid to an FFD spacewarp and link the spacewarps to the dummy. You can now use the FFD box to make the eyes oval, but the eyes will rotate underneath the FFD so they'll stay oval in the same alignment (if you get what I mean). It'll work just as well if your eyelids are part of the head mesh rather than separate objects.

Thanx Iain, you the man. My eyelids are part of the head mesh, so I don't need to use a dummy do I? Actually the corneas are seperate objects, so I just grouped them with the eyeballs and linked the space-warp to the group. The only problem I have now is that the pupils sort of stretch when the eyes look up. Should I maybe make the lattice larger before linking it to the eye?

[Iain McFadzen]

No, you don't necessarily need to use the dummy, though I probably would anyway. It's often a good idea to separate objects from their parent with an extra null if the child is going to have any additional animation controllers assigned (in this case probably a look-at constraint).

I don't know what to suggest to stop the details on the eyes from stretching, as undesirable as it may be it's exactly how I'd expect it to react. You could use an Attachment constraint to stick the cornea to the surface of the eyeball I suppose. I'd seriously advise against using Groups inside an animated heirarchy though, it would be better to just link them together below the FFD than to group them.

As for making the lattice bigger, I honestly don't know. I seem to remember there's a checkbox in the FFD spacewarp somewhere called "only inside volume" or something similar (don't have max open just now). I'd assume that as long as you leave that box UNchecked the actual size of the FFD shouldn't make any difference, though obviously you'd need to check it if you were deforming a small part of the head mesh with the same space warp. Or I could be talking total pish and thinking about something else entirely :)

[GRMac13]

Once again, thanx Iain. I linked the corneas and eyeballs, and set up the spacewarps. It works great except for the "stretching" bit, but I'll try and fix that later. It's not so noticeable anyway, but it'll bother me knowing it's there even if nobody else notices it in the final render.

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