Need Help On Cartoon Eye!

[Illusion-shadow]

I am not very familiar with Maya, but in Max, we have something call a ffd space wrap, where it will deform the mesh after its transform. So if you build a sphere eyes and rotate it, it will stay flat. Do they have that in Maya?

[Lern2LveWithIt]

im not sure if they have that....i think what i have on my eyes are pretty similar. I have a flat back but i did something so when the camera is behind the eyes you dont see a flat face...its invisible!!! But what im really trying to do is figure out how to move around the pupil so it stays on the eye ball!

Thanks for replying!

[Saihtam]

Do they have that in Maya?

Yes there is something like that, it's call a lattice.

here is a little setup
Create sphere, create the pupill groupe them together.
Create the lattice with the group selected.
division 2 2 2, deplace the lattice point.
Create locator, place it in front of the eyes.
Select the locator, shift Select the group (not the lattice)
Contraint / Aim

[sporadic]

What is the eye geometry, mesh or nurbs? There are a couple of nodes that stay connected to geometry such as the pointOnSurface node (for NURBS) that I've used in cases like this. In fact, I've posted something in my blog just today that might help. Also check out the script I posted in the thread here (http://http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=88&t=460852), for a pretty good setup to constrain something to a nurbs surface.

Hope this helps.

[Saihtam]

Nice stuff Sporadic, BTW I have a question,
is there something like pointOnCurve for polygon?

[sporadic]

Yup. I think it's pointOnMesh, but it's a plug-in, at least in the versions of Maya I worked with. It's free -- heck, they give source in the devkit -- but you've got to install it.

If you don't have/don't want to fight that and have Unlimited, using a furPointOnMesh also does the trick. In fact, I suspect that it's the exact same code internally. They're almost exactly 1-for-1 in functionality.

It's a little trickier to use than the pointOnSurface. You have to give it a poly to track on and UVs within the poly. Great for rivetting things to a surface but no so good for things moving along the surface, as whenever you pass the poly boundaries, it's tricky to keep the hiccups out.

You could also use the closestPointOnMesh plug-in (also available devkit-wise), with a bit of projection, but that seems awfully complex a setup, and complexity breeds instability, not to mention 3 a.m. debugging sessions.

To be honest, I wouldn't use any of them. I'd just create a nurbs surface (hidden, of course) to approximate the mesh shape in the area of interest. Much cleaner. Osipa uses a setup like that in Stop Staring for the eyebrows and lashes, I think (haven't read it in awhile). The nurbs solutions are just really clean and stable for things like this.

[Saihtam]

thank you for all this informations!

[Lern2LveWithIt]

the eyes were made of polys!

[sporadic]

Ok, you could try using a pointOnMesh like I suggested above, but I'd try creating a hidden nurbs surface first, since it tends to be simpler and avoids the plug-in problem.

[Droo]

Maybe I dont exactly understand your problem - but if youre trying to make the pupil stay always on the surface of the eyeball you can simply use the geometry constraint Animation->Constraints->Geometry , Also if you want the pupil to rotate along the surface (so that it always stays perpendicular to the surface you can use the normal constraint. I'm personally using that setup right now and it works fine.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.