Complex eye rig test.

Artwork Works in Progress
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Well I say complex but then I wouldn’t really know. Here’s a youtube vid. The quality doesn’t look great on youtube so I’m uploadng to vimeo. Will post later.

I’ve attached the rig. All c+c welcome. (there has to be an easier way to do it.)

To use: Move the oval to control the eye. Scale it in Z to blink. and move the horizontal line to offset the eyelids.

I’ve tried to keep the controls as simple as possible. But make it as real as possible. You might notice that the shape of the lense deforms the eyelid. (but it’s very sublte

Attachments

eyerig.blend (459 KB)

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that’s really cool. Thanks for sharing. Too bad ur animation is quite short tho , but still, nice job :wink:

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For some reason the vimeo one has turned out longer (a bit). But the quality isnt that much better.

http://www.vimeo.com/7762063

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Nice work and thanks for sharing it with us

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Hey, tested the rig, Honestly, not that good in my opinion.

You never get the eye to close completely, the eyelids close in a strange kind of way where the construct around the pupil and if you close the eye completely, some of the eye-ball mesh sticks through.

Lots of tweaking required, advise, look on youtube, TP8000cfv complex face rigging tutorials, completely different setup.

Keep up the good work though, your nearly there

regards, Hewi

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Hi Hewi,

You’re right it does need tweaking, however the eyeball poking through is a mesh issue not a rigging issue. I’ve adjusted the problem verts, (also the mesh is smoothed in the finall version which curves the edges around the eyeball.) So I’ve attached a new one for you.

One thing though, the reason you cant close the eyes fully might be because you are trying to close them with a manipulator. You cant actually scale anything to 0 using manipulators you have to type a 0 value in (sorry I didn’t make it foolproof.;)) Press the keys s then z then 0 to scale z to 0.

TP8000s rigs are ok-ish but I’ll be honest and say they are nowhere near realistic enough for what I want. I’m sure he’d agree because he wasn’t going for realism.

This is the eye rigging section. And I’ll put my cards on the table…

If you think this

looks better than this

then we’ll have to disagree.

Attachments

eyerig.blend (479 KB)

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Just want to apologise if I sounded arrogant comparing my stuff to TP8000s. It wasn’t my intention, as I said he was doing a tutorial and was going for a completely different look. He can afford to do a simple rig in those circumstances.

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I’ve put some volume preservation stuff in it so you can be quite extreme with the upper eyelid, but not the lower one (they don’t move as much)

Attachments

eyerig001.blend (485 KB)

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hey tmcthree,

You should lock X and Y scaling axis in transform properties to make your rig easy and foolproof. Remeber, if you rig, you are doing it for the animator and they need to have an easy life controlling the rig. Imagine what it would mean when you want to close the eye and have to click-select, press S-Key, press Z-key, and click again to confirm, on click too much, and it’s not me who says this. Imagin you have a rig with about 50 bones to control one pose, having to click once more would mean 50 extra clicks, for three poses 150 … you can do the math. If transforms are locked, click-select, S-Key, and click confirm, one click less. That’s were I went wrong, I assumed locks where there, making the eye close on all axis, which is un-logical and strange for the ‘eye’.

Now about the comparison video with tp8000cfv’s rigging, the Vimeo, funny enough, if you look closely, the eye also does not close completely, which is an error. It will probably easily be fixed by tweaking and giving him/her some eyelashes but at this point it ‘fails’, so indeed we disagree to say the vimeo is better than the tp8000cfv (the latter being a blander man-candy adaptation by the way, created by Bassam Kurdali, and he is TOP) . Furthermore, tp8000cfv says it himself <quote> This is only a model on which you can build, it is very basic and will be completely different in yours</quote>, so if you adapt his basic rig, add some more latice modifiers and bits, you’ll end up the same.

Final thing for now: keep it simple. If I count correct, I can see 39 plus 19 bones to control one eye, wauw. The eye is complex, agreed but sixty-odd bones … you know 95% of your animation will be regarding other stuff than perfect eye-lid movement. Keep your very complex rigging file for the extreme close-ups, where it might be even better to model it vertex by vertex and use a simplification, like TP8000cfv’s for general use.

Don’t get me wrong, your effort is good and the work looks very promising. Again, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound lectural or anything like that, this is just what I honestly think. Loving Blender and wishing you much fun using it.

Speak to you soon.

Hewi

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Sorry Hewi, I haven’t got time to argue all these points. I think you’re being a bit petty, I’ve agreed that the eyelid should close more and it will, it’s easily fixed, the rig and animation is called test. None of the problems your pointing out are insurmountable by the method I’m currently using.

150 clicks per pose! LOL. Thats only if everything was controlled using a scale controler!!!

As for the comparison between my video and tp8000s ( apart from the eye closing, which will be fixed) You’re right we disagree greatly.

And as for me using too many bones. You remind me of a guy I used to work with and a games studio, who insisted that every model we made was low poly enough that it could be used in any part of the game. This was idiotic because some models were used for particular parts of the game where there were very low gpu demands and we could have used many more polys. The result being a waste of gpu time.

The point is you don’t even know what I’m rigging and you’re telling me its wrong! I am only rigging a face (I’ll attach the image) and I want it as realistic as possible.

You should show me some of your work to demonstrate why I should pay more attention to your opinion.

Attachments

mum head large002.jpg599×958 57.6 KB

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as I assumed, you’re getting my opinion completely wrong. I think your work is great, your rig needs some tweaking but is also quite nice and you’re doing good stuff, I am not making myself clear. People can disagree but not about the nice work you present. That looks great.

end discussion

Regards, Hewi

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As requested, a three toe’d leg rig (bird et al.)

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You know, I think you should be listening to people’s opinions rather than blowing them off and insulting them. The thing is, they’re trying to help by giving you suggestions, not trying to shoot down your hard work. The thing is, the rig is very complex, probably more complex than it needs to be. I think you can get the same effect with half the bones, but you’re not even considering the suggestions given to you.

The WIP forum is for suggestions and feedback. If you don’t want any, then don’t post. Nothing’s perfect and can always be improved. I think Hewi nailed it on the description of your rig.

And no, I’m not going to show you any of my previous work in order to validate my opinion, before you ask. That was an extremely arrogant thing to ask for, and completely irrelevant.

One more thing. You said “I say complex but I wouldn’t really know,” then you start acting like you DO know regardless of what you’re being told. What’s that about?

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constructive criticism, as it is called
it feels strange but it’s very usefull