I am doing my first modeling project. I am making a cartoon bee. The eye socket is kind of an odd shape.
I used the tute on BlenderChar to create the eye. It looks nice but a spherical eyeball does not fill the socket correctly. I figure I could just build a plane mesh that fits it nicely, but my concern is the later animation of the eyeball. Being that I have next to no modeling experience, and absolutely no animating experience - I’m looking for advice on this type of situation.
Thanks!
Select the eyeball in question and [Tab] to edit mode.
Now hit the [o] (as in oh, not zero) and select one of the vertices or knots.
Move your selection by hitting [g] and moving your cursor, as you do this roll your mouse wheel back and fourth ([+] [-] keys do the same thing) . See how the vertices around the one you pick are affected?
Nudge it around first on one side and then the other until you get what you are looking for.
These buttons do the same as the [O]key
please post me a picture or send me the file so i can help you.
i cannot realy imagione what your problem is. 
Keep the eye as a sphere, but deform it with a lattice to fit the socket.
With this setup you can still rotate the eye to make the pupil move.
See the guy on the left in this blend for an example:
http://bebop.cns.ualberta.ca/~cwant/rvkdemo4.zip
Chris
Here is the .blend file. It’s my first model, and still very much a WIP - so excuse the mess.
http://www.nuance9.com/bee.blend
I’m not sure if the lattice deform thing would work. The tutorial I found on that looks great for a Mr. Potato head still charachter - where there is no actual eye socket that the eyeball must move within. Please correct me if I am wrong.
darn it yopu have a real odd eye socket :<
just kidding but it is kinda difficult to get the eye build and than nicely rotatable with such an odd shape.
even when the skull is not circular the flesh eyelids etc. cover the round eyeball.
mh i will model an eye for you than you can play with it but i think hugh rotations of the eyeball is pretti difficult with this eyesocket.
addition:
i will add the eyelid so the eye ball is more covered from what i saw now it does not look to bad!
cekuhnen -
Thanks for your help!
I know the socket is pretty weird. It is sort of the shape of a real bee eye - but trying to model it and make it behave like a human eye instead of a bee eye.
I think the movie “Antz” had a bee in it if I recall correctly. I should probably rent it and see how they did it’s eyes.
Again, thanks you.
Here is Hos’s (good) suggestion in action on your bee file.
http://www.door3.org/bee2.blend
He is a pretty advanced blenderizer and assumed that you understood the ideas of parenting & lattices.
Oh by the way nice job for a 1st effort.
Door3 -
THanks for the model. I am pretty clueless, so I have not idea about parenting and lattices. I will try to research those tomorrow.
One question though. It appears that you are basically applying some deformation to the sphere. That succeeds in filling the eye socket - but it also skewers the actual cornea / retina / pupil part too, which I would consider an undesirable side effect. Can the lattice approach be used while avoiding that?
Thanks! I appreciate all your patience with my questions.
" but it also skewers the actual cornea / retina / pupil part too"
I left it like that that intentionally to spark that very question. The effect is caused by the proximity of the deformed object to the lattice.
There is a lot more to these lattices than rigging eyeballs.
Just for grins, try a little experiment. select the "eyesphere " and move it around and through the lattice. Deform the lattice even further,and then move the sphere thru it and see what happens…
In this case the problem is caused by the eye is sticking out in front of the lattice. Moving it to a more central location is the fix for this particular eyestrain. (Note: If you move it and then move the timeline it will dis-regard your editing unless you update the keyframe. Just press the I key (I like eye not L) and follow the directions.)
As for lattices, well you could write a book. The more you play with them the more ideas you get. I especially like them for animating hair and shear clingy cloth.
A quick example
http://www.door3.org/LatticeInfluence.html
(Give this one 45 seconds to load on a wire modem)
I have a rather round about and difficult way of getting objects to “fit” in odd spaces. For you problem I would suggest…
In EDIT mode, select the vertices that make up the interior of the socket.
SHIFT + D them, and § separate.
Take those new vertices and, from a side view, use them as the meridian of the eyeball.
Extrude the whole thing a little and scale it down a touch.
Keep doing this until you end up with a hemisphere on one side.
Then do it to the other side.
Make that your eyeball.
I haven’t time to d/l the .Blend file, but I hope this helps…
After looking at the file, I think this might work to a point. Perhaps this is where that “To Sphere” button would work…Any thoughts, anyone?