Help with rigging a 2D eye

I was wondering if anyone could help me out with a problem I’m having with the rigging setup I have for the eyes of my model.

The problem plaguing my rigging efforts is that there is a tendency for the pupil mesh to deform when I move the bone that controls the eyes’ movement.

I’ve noticed that the severity of the deformation seems to be dependent on how far away the controlling bone is from the pupil mesh, and that by keeping the bone relatively close reduces the amount of deformation, although it doesn’t eliminate it entirely.

I’ve tried looking at a number of different eye rigging tutorials on YouTube, but so far I haven’t been able to find anything to remedy my current predicament.

As always, any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Link to Blend file removed because the original problem has now been resolved.

So earlier while I was playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as Diddy Kong, I realized that Diddy had a very similar style of eyes as my own character model. Upon this realization, I searched online for 3D models of Diddy Kong to see if I could potentially use any of them as references for how I could get my model’s eyes working properly. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any rigged models and as a result I could not gain any new insight into how to make the eye rig work. This might seem like a rather pointless story to bring up, but at this point, I’m just grasping at straws in the vain hope that perhaps this might point anyone willing to lend a hand in the right direction into how this mess can sorted out.


Random side note: I noticed that the pupil of Diddy’s model in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze isn’t actually attached to the rest of the eye. I have no idea if this particular observation has any value or not, I just thought I should mention it, although it probably doesn’t :confused:.

I also tried redesigning the pupil into a more efficient shape, with the hope that changing the geometry might help reduce the amount of distortion occurring with the mesh. But alas, no such luck, the pupil would continue to distort as the bone controlling the eye(s) was moved around. Much like before, the amount of distortion in the mesh seems to be affected by how far away the eye-controller is from the pupil.

I thought about replacing the pupil mesh with a image texture much like the eyelid(s), but I fear that it won’t much of a difference. My fear is that the mesh for the image texture would be pretty much guaranteed to buckle as it was moved around, and would very likely end up distorting the image texture in the process.

Honestly, I hate the Shrinkwrap modifier more than anything else I’ve dealt with so far. In the past, with my numerous attempts at fixing the endless problems I would inevitability come across, in time I would eventually gain a deeper understanding of the logic behind whatever aspect of Blender I was currently working with. That new understanding of that logic would then allow me to work within it to accomplish my goal. However, with the Shrinkwrap modifier, after spending hours and hours trying to figure it out, I feel like I’ve gained zero new insight into how it works, and by extension, I have no idea how to fix the issues that come up when I try to use it.

I just don’t know what to do now :anguished:, especially since unlike past problems I’ve dealt with, there doesn’t seem to be any other alternative available that I could fall back upon. If I can’t figure out how to properly rig the eyes then I am simply screwed :sob:.

Maybe this can solve ur problem,but this is use texture.

using a texture and UVWarp modifier is a better approach, but if you want to stick to shrinkwrapped meshs , I’ve fixed them :
eye_rigging_help_b.blend (1.0 MB)

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Sorry for taking so long in responding, I got sidetracked by some other elements of the project I’m working on. Anyways, thanks for reminding me about the UVWarp modifier, the tutorial that blender_art1Yee linked was actually the first video that I consulted for rigging the eyes and it included UVWarping. However, I didn’t understand at the time how the UVWarp modifier worked and I ended up becoming quite thoroughly confused. I then tried consulting other videos but this only served to needlessly complicate matters & made the whole situation even more confusing. But after being reminded of the UVWarp modifier, I looked at a couple of videos dedicated solely to how the modifier worked, and I finally gained an understanding of how it worked and was able to use it to properly rig the eyes.

The eyes now work as intended, but there’s still one issue that needs to be dealt with. The issue is that for some reason, the pupil texture appears faded & I don’t know why. My best guess is that the problem is related to me erasing the Alpha while painting in Texture Paint mode in a attempt to make certain parts of the eyelid(s) & pupil textures transparent, but I can’t say for certain if that is indeed the case.

In this second screenshot shown below, if you look at the area highlighted by the red circle, you can see what appears to be a remnant of something. I don’t know what this “something” is, but when I open the texture file in GIMP 2, it doesn’t appear to be visible at all.

I hope that someone can help me out with this last remaining issue with the eyes of my model, however, as a random side note, thanks for going to the effort of re-rigging the pupils of my model. I didn’t end up using the re-rigged version, instead using the suggested UVWarp method, due to the fact that the pupils always remained visible above the eyelid(s) regardless of how I tried to fiddle with the settings, but I appreciated the effort anyways.