Hello,
I’m very new to blender and I just recently started making a model from scratch. I’ve spent a lot of time on this and right now I’m trying to rig eyelids. I followed THIS tutorial and it worked out well, except that when I rotate the primary bone in my head, certain vertices in the eyelids do not maintain their shape.
It seems as though certain vertices are being left behind. I’ve seen other online help say something like I need to join my eyelids and my body mesh together to fix it, but the eyelids are already bound to the head. And for some reason in object mode I can’t seem to select the body, just the two seperate meshes I have (eyes and eyelids.)
I read somewhere that for weight paint the dark blue means that a certain part of the mesh will not move. But the way I have my bones weighted certain parts of the mesh need to be immobile. But they need to move with the head.
I don’t know enough about blender to fix my problem. Any information will help. Attached are images for clarity including the model hierarchy. All assets are bound to the headbone currently “Armature.003.” The eyes have their own armature for 2D eye mapping. They are not an issue and move with the model just fine.
If they need to move with the head, weight them to the head. If they need to move with an eyelid bone, weight them to the eyelid bone and parent the eyelid bone to the head bone.
You might consider looking into a program called MakeHuman.
I realize that it’s going to take some time to learn, but it is a good tool for human character creation - and a good way to see someone else’s approach when it comes to rigging. It does quite well at eyes and lids.
Thanks for the advice! But neither option you proposed seems to work. I would love to give you a file, but it seems because I’m a new user to this site I’m not allowed to upload my .blend file.
Let me try and describe my process as best I can as an alternative.
I released all parentage from my armature, transferred weight from my eyelids to my eyelid armature, parented my eyelids to the body mesh, and then parented my body mesh to my head bone. Rotation still causes my eyelids to warp/distort. (Rotating the body forward makes the eyelids expand and stretch out, rotating backwards makes them shrink and stretch backwards.) When I rotate I am rotating only the headbone as my eyelid bones are bound to it. The eyelid bones move with the head bone, but the eyelids weighted to the eyelid bones warp. The bones also have a pose assigned to them, which holds the eyelids open.
Here’s the object hierarchy for that:
Alternately, I again released all parentage, transferred weight between eyelids and body, then parented eyelids and head to the bones separately. Same issue still occurs. (Can’t post hierarchy image to this because new users can only post one image at a time.)
The eyelids are a flat mesh that clip into the head mesh.
please let me know if this link does not work or if the file is bad. Pupil texture will be missing.
I’ve checked the size of my objects in object mode and they all have this scale:(1, 0.6, 1) When I resize Y to 1 the character gets rly wide. Yikes! Is there a way to fix this or because all object scales are set to this is it okay?
Applying the current scale is not the same as scaling your object.
You do this through Ctrl - A and then choosing the transform you want to apply. Once you’ve done that you will see the value’s for scale are all 1 without your object being visually changed.
Do not parent your armature to a mesh object. Parented your mesh object to an armature.
Do not use multiple armatures. Use a single armature.
Do not leave any vertices unweighted. Weight everything.
After that, you’ll probably still have some deformation problems, but in no way is it clear how you intend to manipulate the eyelid bones, so it’s nearly impossible to tell you what to do.
I know this is not the easiest advice to receive but I think its wise to learn some general basics on rigging first. The tutorial you are using on face rigging is also not the best imho.
With that said I don’t have any really good recommendations for free tutorials on rigging so it will require some searching around on your part.
One advice I do want to give you is to look into shapekeys for the eyes instead of bones. I feel that would be easier to manage with your cartoony eyes.
Thanks for the advice. The 2D look of the character’s face was really important to me and I wasn’t sure how to make my eyelids maintain that. I actually thought rigging was my only option. Shape keys look much easier. I will still need to rig the character’s body because her model is needs animations for a small video game. But I think shape keys at least solves my problem with her face. Thanks for all the help!
