CGTalk - Eyes in character mesh or parented to bones ?

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berniebernie

01-27-2010, 03:02 PM

Hello

Is it bad practice to add your eyes to your main character mesh, or should I leave them outside as separate objects and just parent ?

I'm thinking the former as I can more easily manage a single mesh (and a single uv map for a single object with a single shader), same goes for deformers, whether they be corrective blendshapes, lattices, wire deformers or whatnot... not to mention a cleaner outliner.

Just wondering what the norm is.

cheers!

bernie

Darksuit

01-27-2010, 04:11 PM

Bernie, It really comes down to what you are using the character for. Each project is going to have it's own needs.

The last game character I did have the Eyes parented to the head joint. No Skinning information. Whereas I did another recent character where the Eyes where bound and being deformed by a lattice to control the shape.

Like anything, just look at it project by project assess what the needs of the Project are, and go from there. =)

berniebernie

01-27-2010, 05:10 PM

thanks... It's a school short film I'm working on, and I'm the geek/setup/fx/render guy so it's up to me mostly, it's just I'd rather know what'll be supposed to do when I join a studio...

I'm probably going the skinned way.

mlager8

01-28-2010, 08:32 PM

I often use different setups depending on the current project, but one advantage to skinning the eyes instead of parenting them is that it frees up the potential parent you would be using to keep them in place, and instead can be used for any eye rigging you might need to do. This problem comes up especially if you are doing a complicated eye rig which requires more than one target.

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