Eye Rigging & Aniamtion issues

[Anonymous]

Hello

First-time poster, I have been working with Maya for over 4 years now and I haven't needed to post any issues regarding Rigs or software as most of the solutions are already on here.

The issue that I have come across is a new technique I am using for rigging eyes with my character. The eye models are not cylindrical as they're stylized and suited for the character. The mesh is constrained to a Planer via "Geometry Constraint" to keep the Eye mesh in place when moving around.

The way to move the Eye mesh is via a control that is constraining the Eye mesh via "Parent Constraint" allowing you to move the Eye with translation and rotation.

I am unable to upload the videos on the forum so if anyone wants to see and help please message on here and I can E-mail you the videos to demonstrate. Thank you

[Anonymous]

I was able to get some videos uploaded this time.

The issue is that when the controls are key'd for animation the mesh of the Eye pops out from the Geometry that it is constrained to. However, upon clicking on the mesh when it pops out seems to put it back into place.

As well as, using and key another control like the head, the Eye mesh seems to go back into place of the mesh that it is constrained to.

Anyone have any ideas why this is happening or some way to fix the issue.

[jmreinhart]

I've seen a similar issue in Maya before. In that case it was because I had inputs into a nodes ".translate" attribute and a separate input into its ".translateX" attribute. Maya will jump between the two positions depending on how they are getting updated by the rig. 

Why did a spherical eye not work for this rig?

[Anonymous]

I wanted to try experimenting and create new Eye rigs from the regular Spherical shape on most characters. I know its not the standard but I wanted to try something I had in mind.

This character is Bulbasaur and his eyes are particularly odd-shaped so when I found out about the poly constraint it made it easier to work with a stylized shape of the eye. 

However, I did notice that when 'Key-Framing' the eye controls the mesh only pops out then, once the mesh of the eye is clicked it pops back into place. The same goes for when moving a different control anywhere else on the rig the eye pops back int place.

I will take a look at when you have mentioned though, it might be how I have parented within the hierarchy which might be causing the issue.

Thank you,

I am still looking for more help just in case this isn't the solution but thanks.

[jmreinhart]

So if you look at some of the images of Bulbasaur from "Detective Pikachu" you'll see that the eye socket IS NOT round but the eyeball IS round. This is really important because when Bulbasaur looks around you want the pupil and iris to remain the same size and shape. If you were to squash the eyeball with a lattice to make the eyeball the same shape as the eye socket then the pupil would change shape as the eye rotated inside the socket. Almost all CG characters have spherical eyes, the only exceptions that come to mind are Patrick and Mr Krabs from "Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water". In that movie the pupils are textures that are probably projected onto the eyeball or composited on afterward to keep the desired shape and size no matter where they are looking. There probably is an example of pupils being meshes on top of the eyeball mesh but nothing comes to mind at the moment.