animating eyelids
 

Hi
I was wandering if anybody could help with an eyelid problem i have at present.

I need to make it so that the eyes (see attachment) which have
the ability to blink with which the corner points (pictured)are fixed points. (it is not possible to have an outer semi sphere which comes aound as the fixed points need to be halfway up the eye and also the semi-sphere will not be fully alligned with the rest of the eye rim)

Is it possible for me to model the lids on in 3 or so positions from open to closed and then make this into a blend shape (i have never used blendshapes before so i not too sure of what can be done and what can't)

It would involve extuding from the current static lids.

any ideas?
I guess i probably should have made my model differetly.

Any help would be much appreciated,
thanks
Matt

hey matt,
how you doing? Well what i do for my eyelids are that i just go ahead and model them. Then in vertex mode, i apply clusters to the eyelids, align the cluster's pivot point to the center of your eye, and animate it that way. Then if you want the "corner points" to stay still, you can just adjust the weight of those vertices that are connected to the cluster/clusters. I wouldn't personally use blendshapes for my eyelids, because it's causes a linear path from souceA to sourceB and wouldn't recreate that rotation of your eyelid.
I hope that helps.
Strytus

thanks for the response, you have helped a lot,
i will give it a try

Hi Matt,

eh... you could properly use a combination of blendshapes and the joints...

I'm not sure how you currently have set it up, but it could be something like this...

place a joint in the middle of the eyeball, and then one at middle of the eyelid close to the outer end of the eyeball... (so the eyelid will follow the eyeball)... then skin the eyelid to the last joint, (make sure you have a blendshape mesh) then put the eyelid as you want it, modify the neutral blendshape mesh, so it does want you want... then use drivenkeys to control this blendshape...

hope this made sense... :)

regards

Strarup

I made cluster for Eyelids, then i put them in a group then i used Constrain > Parent to ring while i move them they back to center why ??