Eye lashes: best method?

[demian]

HI there people,

IM working in a realistic character and since its my first attempt for these kind of characters I dont know how im going to make the eye lashes. I mean, I know how to model but, whats the best method to animate them? I will use geometry for the eye lashes but they wouldnt follow the deformations of the blend shape. So far the way I figured out to animate them is with set driven keys. It would be a little painful to animate the lashes everytime the character winks and sync them. It works but Im sure there are better ways to deal with this.

• marco

[mweier]

In reply to:
HI there people,

IM working in a realistic character and since its my first attempt for these kind of characters I dont know how im going to make the eye lashes. I mean, I know how to model but, whats the best method to animate them? I will use geometry for the eye lashes but they wouldnt follow the deformations of the blend shape. So far the way I figured out to animate them is with set driven keys. It would be a little painful to animate the lashes everytime the character winks and sync them. It works but Im sure there are better ways to deal with this.

- marco

Do you mean eyelids? or the actual eyelashes (hairs along ridge of eylids).

If you're trying to make it blink, use a cluster for each eyelid & have it rotate around the center of the eye. Then it's just the rotation that you'd set up into a set-driven key.

Rule 1.) There are no rules

[demian]

Hi,

I meant the eye lashes (the little hairs and your solution works pretty well if you are using clusters to animate the eyelid. But Im planning to use blend shape for the eyelids instead of clusters. I was just wondering how I could animate the lashes to follow the movement of the eye lids since blend shape just transforms vertices and i couldnt parent the lashes to anything.

thanks for your reply,

• marco

[bosco]

You know you can do blendshapes on hierarchies, not just individual surfaces... Just adjust the eyelashes to fit the eyelids for each blend target.

[yellowsayshello]

Another thing you could do is position the eyelashes in the right place and put their pivots at the center of the eye...then use the eyelid open/close to drive the rotation of the eyelash, so if the eyes blink, the lashes follow...

Of course, if you are trying to make a very realistic character, you should only use blendshapes in certain places since blending only causes CVs to move from one position to the next in a completely straight line...that is not realistic. That's why many people use weighted clusters for eyelids, as you can get it to act very similarily to a real eye as it rotates open in a curved motion. Even this isn't completely realistic either, since the real eyeball is not perfectly spherical - even without the cornea bulge at the front...it's more squashed...but after all, it's usually more art than science.

"God saves those who save often..." - me.

[demian]

Thanks people, I will try both methods. I just think the cluster is a little complicate do weight the point in the small area with lots of CVs

• marco

[joojaa]

If you want more realism you could try this... Havent tested it or anything but should work.

create the eylids but so that they are inside the eye.

Now make this a softbody with a goal weight of something (test!)

move the ponits so that the eyelids aer outside the eye (leave the target shape where you want it the target shape)

make the eye a colision object.

[li]Make som nodes for animation....
Now the eyelid should react to the eye surface... maybe you would nees some springs or somthing but i hope you get the point.

Also there are ways to make blenshapes moove non-lineary. But you would need some in the middle shapes that are driven py other blendshape sliders.

Some ideas soud crazy... Indeed most of them are.[/li]

[blueiceblack]

Hi.
I found a good way to animate deforming eyelids is to model the eye perfectly spherical, model the eyelid to suit and set up a cluster to animate it. Then, deform both the eye and the eyelid with a deformer. This way the eye is the correct shape, the eyelid deforms with it, and everyone is happy!

Best.

Larky.

[joojaa]

Yeah, used that once worked fine (and is probably better than the one i outlined above), just slipped my mind.

What the hell was I thinking!