I have rigged my character’s eyelids by duplicating the spheres used for the eyeballs twice for each eye, scaling them up just slightly and resting them right above the eyes. I’m very satisfied with the blinking I’m getting, however when I turn the head of the rig at an angle, the crux of the half spheres stay upright giving the character’s eyelids an alien like eye blink.
I wouldn’t use that kind of setup myself. But if you want to keep it that way, you could remove the eyelids parent to the eyeball object. Then parent both to the eyeball bone instead. Now the eyelid objects may bump out of position when you do this, but you can use the pivot point for the eyeball to lock them back to their correct position. This should keep your rig working as you have it, but the lids will now inherit the rotation of the eyeball bone.
Wow, I really appreciate you getting back to me on this. Thank you so much. How would you tackle rigging eyelids on a character such as this, if I may ask? Pull part of the mesh from the head down?
Well, I don’t have any experience dealing with more stylised or cartoon type characters. In your case that’s what you seem to be going for. So using objects in the way you are appears to work. You could make the lids part of the head mesh I suppose, and use a few more bones with weighting. It might work. But I think the look of it would be subjective. If you’re happy with it, I’d keep your current approach.
You might take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFUfg28pvw part 10 towards the end and 11. David Ward does a lot of cartoon type characters. The video gets a little messy in parts, but the rig will be the same. Another approach using the metarig.
