CGTalk - how to animate non-spherical eyes ???

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bobtronic

06-02-2003, 02:49 PM

Hi folks,

I have now some characters I want to animate.
The problem is some have non-spherical eyes
and I don't know how to animate them. With
spherical eyes I simply rotate them or even simpler
make an expression to a target. But now for
eliptical or egg-like eyes I can not simply rotate
them, they would stay out of their holes or so.
Have I to animate texture coordinates for iris ?
Or is it better to make a seperate object for the
iris ?

any comments or suggestions please ?

happy rendering and thanks in advance, Bob

basilisk

06-02-2003, 02:58 PM

make a spherical eye inside a deformer, then animate the sphere?

bobtronic

06-02-2003, 03:45 PM

Originally posted by basilisk
make a spherical eye inside a deformer, then animate the sphere?

thanks and cool idea. i will try it.

Bob

Wilson-3d

06-02-2003, 04:17 PM

Hi. I just wanted to bring up another idea. The Little alien file that comes with Mocca uses a good technique. I really liked the way the pupils were animated and asked Janine. This was the response.

"It's all one single geometry but that doesn't mean it has to be a single connected mesh. Ok, in detail: I made a platonic object, scaled it down, positioned it on one eye, duplicated it, mirrored it, then selected the two pupils and the head and connected them using the connect function from the functions menu. Then I made several morph targets where I only moved the pupil polygons."

Just thought you may be interested in another possible route.

JIII

06-02-2003, 10:36 PM

yeah that will work perfectly, unless you have veins or other marks that will not move so easily. other than that its a great idea.

AdamT

06-03-2003, 01:32 AM

I haven't tried it, but couldn't you also use a texture and animate the x/y offsets?

JIII

06-03-2003, 02:13 AM

that might not work to well on a egg shaped eye. you would be able to tell that the pupil was independant of the eyeball.

Stray

06-03-2003, 06:01 AM

I was thinking a bout this one myself. For cartoony eyes (just a black object moving around on a spheriod) I was thinking about Donovan Keiths "Bubble" in his Golem toolset. Something like thatbut instead you could type in the dimensions of the distorted sphere object.

Also you could use geometry snapping for a quick fix. Just a few thoughts,

Good Luck!!
-S

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