I’ve got a simple cartoonish eye rig. Basically, each eye has a sphere, and 2 halves of a sphere. The sphere is the eyeball, and the halves are the eyelids. I have a bone that the sphere (eyeballs) track to, and I’ve got my eyelids setup to open and then close. Everything works as it should…except, whenever I rotate the head on the character’s rig, the eyes stay where they are placed. I tried parenting the entire system to the character’s rig, and the eyeballs will be where they should be, but, the eyelids just track to the headbone by rotating. I believe the reason why is because I have the eyelids locked to their location, so they can only follow the parent by rotating. I tried adding constraints to the eyelids to copy the location of the eyeballs. And that didn’t work either. Any help would be much appreciated!
Hi, without the file or a screenshot it’s hard to know but if you parented the eye ball and the eye lead to the head bone in position and rotation than they should both follow the head rotation.
Check under Object Properties/Relations if the parent is the right one. If so there must be something else controlling the eye mesh. You could try Parent Constraints or Armatures as well.
How do I check under object properties and relations? And what kind of constraints? (I’ve never used many constraints for stuff, so, IDK what kinds I’d use)
I assume you are totally new to blender so forgive me if i’m wrong.
Here you can check the relations.
If there is no Object to find under parent maybe you just parented it wrong. If you want the Object to follow a bone you first have to select the Object then the Armature, then change to Bone Edit Mode and choose the correct Bone and press Ctrl+P, a window pops up and with several Options, choose Bone and it should be parented correctly.
Or you could define the parent directly under the Object Properties/Relations Menu (see Screen). In that case choose the Armatures first and then the Bone.
Also in the modifier menu (the wrench looking symbol) you could add a parent constraint. Works similar to normal parenting. Just apply the parent constraint on the mesh you want to parent and under target you choose the Object or Armature/Bone of your choice.
Or you could create a Vertex Group by going into edit mode, select all vertices (by pressing a) and under Object Data Properties Menu (triangle like symbol) assign the selection to a new Vertex Group. Give the Group the same name like the bone you want to parent to. Then apply an Armature Modifier to the Mesh and choose the Armature that contains the right bone.
Thanks! No, I am not new to blender. I’ve modeled many things, but I’ve never done a complex rig/character before. I’ve hardly ever touched modifiers and constraints till recently. I’ll see if your ideas work! Thank you, again. 
Nope, it just got weirder. Now the eyeballs are going all over the place, and the eyelids are tracking properly. I tried adjusting the tracking axis, and that didn’t help. I also tried uploading my blend file, but since I’m a new user, I can’t do that yet.
do you have a drop box?
I could upload my file to MEGA. Which is like dropbox, only with end-to-end encryption. I’ll send it to you via that. I’ll probably do that tomorrow, though.
Here is my file. It’s pretty large, and I’ll delete the vertices later to optimize it. https://mega.nz/#!mnRxgKxa!vTxkf8o79D1ZqYSwoaMmKNuGAUVpedGUejul9rLZI38
I’d also like to add that I’m perfectly fine with you fixing my eye rig for me, but please also tell me what you did to fix it. Thanks!
Thanks! I’ll watch it now.
I didn’t find that video extremely helpful, and I think I might have missed how he parented it all to the head bone and that kind of stuff. But I did notice that he focused on using origins, which I really didn’t pay much attention to with my rig. But, it appears as though I didn’t mess that up since the origins are in the exact center of the eyeballs. Thanks for the video, anyway.
Note: I just noticed that the eyelids aren’t tracking properly either. I mean, they stay where they should, but their rotation is stuck to the bone that controls them.
I will attach a file soon for you to dissect.
Thanks! I think this will be easy to put into my character rig. Thank you!
You welcome, but i really think you will benefit from recreating it yourself.
I see. That makes sense.
I think I’d rather have someone repair my current system. Because I can’t seem to get this re-sized for my model, and I’d like to not recreate the eyelids and the entire system again.