I’m working on a character model and currently for the eyelashes I have one plane each for the top and bottom lashes with the same number of spans as the eyelid and use vertex snapping and occasionally manual rotation as needed to keep the eyelashes conformed to the geometry (I select the entire vertical loop with the bottom one as the active vertex, and do each row, one at a time), and a second shape key that shoves the bottom row of vertices into the mesh a little bit so subD doesn’t make it float outside the body by a couple mm.
I’m wondering if there is a better, more efficient way?
After comparing my texturing results to some other models I’ve downloaded, I think a slightly more complex, less uniform layered approach would add depth and realism, but this is a rigged model that needs the eyelashes to stay attached to lids while maintaining a consistent size and shape even as it deforms with the rest of the eyelid and even if I switch to edge snapping, my current method would be a lot more tedious with extra geometry, so I’m wondering how other people do it.
So you went with shapekeys for the eyes open/closed positions ? If it’s not too much work I’d recommend doing this with your armature bones, but it can be tedious if the definition is high. However it has the advantage of not needing to do the same work twice, since you can just weight paint the eyelashes to the eyelids bones, and use data transfer to make sure the weights are exactly the same.
If you’re keeping with the shapekey strategy, why not join the eyelashes to the body mesh ? then you’d only have to manage a single shapekey, including both eyelids and eyelashes. As far as I know joining objects together keeps shapekeys and vertex groups intact (although for safety you’d have to double-check that everything behaves correctly if you choose to go down that route).
Well… Maybe. I’m experimenting with both bone based face rigs and shapekey based ones, I’ll settle for whichever one works best, or even Frankenstein bits of them together as needed. It’s a convoluted approach I realize, and may sound like a waste of time since I’m doing twice the work, but this is a personal study and is as much about exploring character creation workflows as it is about creating a character model.
And actually the eyelashes are already joined to the body mesh (for exactly the reason you mentioned), and you are correct that the vertex groups and shapekeys were perfectly preserved on join, but I’m wondering how to best conform the eyelashes to the geometry as I make changes to the eyelid shape, and/or start over on the eyelashes.
I’m not a specialist of face rigs, but I’ve usually found the best approach partly depends on how stylized your character is. Usually, realistic characters have spherical eyes whereas cartoon characters tend to have flattened eyes (spheres deformed with lattice), and in the latter case you sometimes can’t just use a bone rotation because it won’t map to the eye surface, and the eyelids might not join nicely at the midpoint. If you want inspiration on how to handle all this, the “Vincent rig” on the Blender cloud is a state-of-the-art reference, but it’s hellishly complex.
As for the eyelids, there’s the solution of making them bone-based, and correcting on top of that with a shapekey (activated automatically with bone rotation), this has the advantage I mentioned earlier of taking the eyelashes along so you kind of get them for free.
Cheers !
If you are wondering how to rotate them perfectly to make the shape keys Transform Pivot Point could be used to change the axis of rotation to the center of the eye ball. After that it should be pretty good for the lash if it started in a nice open eye pose. Maybe do some tweeking with Proportional Editing or Sculpting Tools after if it doesn’t look right. In art sometimes things have to be done to make it look right that don’t logically make sense. Being able to tweek with the shape keys is why it’s so powerful.
My character is semi-realistic, and the eyeball construction is pretty traditional - spherical with a cornea bulge and an interior layer for an iris.
I think I’ve come up with a viable method of controlling the lashes using a curve modifier (or more accurately, I watched the video on Nazar Nochenko’s eyelash product, and figured out out to reproduce a similar effect on my own geometry).
EDIT: Meant to say thank you for taking the time to address my questions.
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That’s not a bad idea, and actually makes perfect sense. I’m going to use a curve modifier over the lashes to control them, but pivoting the rotation from inside the eyeball could still be useful.