Eye Constrain Problem

[mastern]

Hi everyone ,

   first of all I want to thank the Mods here for the support  provided in the forum here ... The thing is that I don`t seem to figure out how to parent or constrain my character`s eyes so they stay in the right place when I animate my character .. I`ve included two photos discribing how the eyeball moves when I tilt the head of the character .. any help regarding how to do it the right way will be appreciated ..

P.S. : I`m using Maya 7 Unlimited and TSM (The Setup Machine ) to rig the character

thank you ,
SirN

[gmask]

I can't tell from those pictures what you have done. It looks a little bit like the head is being deformed overall besides just at the neck.. if that makes sense?

Anyway it is common to place joints at the center of where the eye would be and then parent them to that joint.

You can place a lattice on the eye and then bind the lattice to the skeleton. This will allow the skeleton to control the position and deformation of the eye but also allow you to rotate the eye.

[mastern]

QUOTE(gmask @ 05/31/08, 10:26 AM) [snapback]286518[/snapback]
I can't tell from those pictures what you have done. It looks a little bit like the head is being deformed overall besides just at the neck.. if that makes sense?

Anyway it is common to place joints at the center of where the eye would be and then parent them to that joint.

You can place a lattice on the eye and then bind the lattice to the skeleton. This will allow the skeleton to control the position and deformation of the eye but also allow you to rotate the eye.

Thanks gmask for replying ... well , what happens exactly when I rotate the head is that the eye tend to move out of the socket .... they don`t follow the head the way they are supposed to . another question .. that joint that I should add .. should it be on the same level as the eyes ( guess this way its rotation will cause both eyes to rotate in the right way with the head .. Am I right about that ?! if not please elaborate .. again thank you for taking the time to reply ..

[gmask]

Did you just bind the eyes to the skeleton with the rest of the head geometry?

If this is the case then they are moving away from the other surface because they are not equally bound to the same joints. Unless your character is supposed to be made out of rubber then entire head above the neck should more or less be controlled by one joint with the exception of the jaw of course and any deformations assocaited with facial animation.

The best way to deal with deforming multiple surfaces is to put them in a lattice deformer than then bind the lattice to the skeleton.. this will uniformly move multiple surfaces.

But you should not need to go that route.

[mastern]

QUOTE(gmask @ 05/31/08, 11:08 AM) [snapback]286520[/snapback]
Did you just bind the eyes to the skeleton with the rest of the head geometry?

If this is the case then they are moving away from the other surface because they are not equally bound to the same joints. Unless your character is supposed to be made out of rubber then entire head above the neck should more or less be controlled by one joint with the exception of the jaw of course and any deformations assocaited with facial animation.

The best way to deal with deforming multiple surfaces is to put them in a lattice deformer than then bind the lattice to the skeleton.. this will uniformly move multiple surfaces.

But you should not need to go that route.

the eyes are seperate geometries , I modeled them after rigging the character .. I simply parented them at first to the head joint , then I tried different constrains but the result wasnt near perfect ... in that picture I exaggerated the head movement to the side to show that the eye in such position is totally out of the socket ..I was hoping to find another way other than lattice deforming to get the eyes to move right when I tilt the head or when I turn the characters head to look at something .. I`m already done with the deformation related to the facial animation .. but the eyes are really bugging me behaving this way ..

[gmask]

Are you sure that the cv's around the eyes are being %100 controlled by the same joint you parented the eyes too?

[mastern]

QUOTE(gmask @ 05/31/08, 11:36 AM) [snapback]286523[/snapback]
Are you sure that the cv's around the eyes are being %100 controlled by the same joint you parented the eyes too?

I mentioned earlier using TSM for rigging the character .. but I did select the cv`s around the eyes , opened the Component Editor and found out that thier control is distrubted among well .. 3 joints ( and 5 Influencers ) , guess this is why they behave this way ..