I’m relatively new to Blender (and 3D modeling in general), so please bare with me.
What I need to do is to be able to blink the eyes and to make simple expressions with them (Mad, sad, etc.). But a little background first.
I am starting work on a cartoon. The character that I have is completely modeled. I began the animation process by getting his mouth to move with Shape Keys, which will eventually be connected to the armature with drivers. That seems easy.
The part that I am having a terrible time with is the eyes. Actually, my character only has one eye. I separated it into the eyeball, upper eyelid, and lower eyelid. Basically, I followed this simple tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNxittnVdlE. This is how his eye is currently modeled, although mine is a little flatter.
It seems that with the eye parented to the lattice that I won’t be able to make expressions, just blink.
Realizing this, I have also tried removing the lattice, rescaling the eye the way I want, and then start making Shape Keys. This seems to not work well at all. The eyelids deform horribly when doing a simple rotation to simulate a blink. Also, this will make it a lot harder to make different expressions with the eye: mad, sad, surprised, etc.
It almost seems that making a cartoon eyeball is hopeless. Is there a way around this? I’m fairly new to this, so I’m guessing I just haven’t been exposed to the proper way of doing this.
I think you have two different issues that will have to be solved in different ways. If you want the eyelids to open and close, they will have to be rigged independently (or use shape keys), and consider those a different animation than any movement to the face/head (I assume you want to create deform shapes like stretch, flatten etc to the cartoon face?). Then if you are applying the lattice modifier to the entire head, it should also effect the eyelids for your deforms, but at the same time you will have to generate the eyelid movement separately through the armature or shape keys (I’d recommend shape keys here, but that’s how I learned to do most animations so I’m falling back on old-school). In theory, I don’t think there should be any conflict between the mesh deform and shape keys on the same mesh if you approach them as individual processes. Of course you have to consider…
Creating shape key eyelid movement WILL result in unwanted deformations, parts of mesh poking through, vertices not moving as you thought, and general frustration. You may have to move and adjust small groups or individual vertices, both on the ‘close’ and ‘open’ path of your movement. The computer is moving vertices along the most logical straight path, not the curved path eyelids take in real life. So making any curved movement, or even more challenging moving something around something else in a curved path (like eyelids around an eyeball!) requires patience. IDK how this will be effected by a mesh deform.
Nothing is hopeless. At first, it just might look that way.
Thanks for the help guys. I tried making my character without the cartoon eye…Just looked terrible, so I reverted back to the cartoon eye. I’ve tweaked the eyes manually to get the desired effect. It sure takes a long time to make it look good, but I’m sure that it gets better with more experience. It’s too bad that the algorithm for determining the path of movement on the mesh deform can’t realize that I’m trying to rotate around a given point! Oh well, I’m able to move on to other parts of my project now. Thanks again!!
