Eye Rigging

Following the tutorial I posted yesterday on rigging the eyes, here are my results:

Starting with the colouring, this was simply a blinn with a ramp shader to make the black pupil and white eyeball. It is possible to add a third and more colours for the iris, but this is not really important for what I am doing.

Duplicating the original eye, so that I have two:

I found this part interesting as I used the Expression Editor to make sure that with the X axis the distance is equal apart for each eye and that one does not follow the other. This means that whilst the left moves in the positive the right moves in the negative. I would not have thought to do this without the tutorial.

I then moved on to the connections so that the Y, Z and Scale values are equal for both When the left moves, so does the right, same for changing shape.

After the eye set up, it was time to move onto creating the locator for them to follow. I created three locators, the main one to lead the others, and the two smaller ones are for each eye to have their own point to look at. This is necessary if one eye needs tweaking or if you want each pupil to act independantly.

This is done using the Aim Constraint.

Finally, testing the eyes to see if they work:

Playblast:

I found this tutorial rather easy even though it seems to have a few parts to it. I feel confident applying this to other rigs, for example the facial one I have been working on and I will do so next. The eyes are really important when it comes to the human body and they tell a lot of emotion or thought from where they are looking, so rigging them is very important for my final year film.

What I have used for this tutorial:

• Basic texturing
• Expression Editor
• Connections Editor
• Locators with Aim Constraints

Next aim: Apply to other eyes