ruaidri
patreon
Procedural Eye-Dart Animation
🕑 Added 2023-08-29 04:08:51 +0000 UTC(If you don't animate in blender, you can skip this one, there's not much here for you, besides a little gif of Chase. But hey, look, it's Chase! Isn't he a pretty boy? Lookit' him, bein' all pretty. Okay bye non-animators see you next time.)
Hey there! I, uh, got a little distracted. I'm working on the monthly painting, honest! It's drawn and inked and ready for painting, but after some chatting with Sen about automating those little eye-darts because they're annoying to animate manually, I got the idea in my head that I could probably make a procedural version of it using Geometry Nodes now that simulation nodes are a thing, and yup! Looks like I can. I think it's pretty freakin' cool, so I'm sharing it!
Notice how his eyes do those little darts in between the big movements of the eye controller, without the eye controller itself moving? That's it. That's all this does. But it does it ~automagically~ and that's very nice to have as an animator. You can control the minimum and maximum time between darts, and the maximum distance darts can travel. Darts always "seek out" the starting rotation, always homing back in on the centre so it shouldn't be possible for the eye to drift too far off target, other than by your maximum dart distance, of course.
I made it as easy to use as I know how, but it will require a little hands-on operation to make fully functional so some comfort using blender is a requirement here. I included a how-to text in the blend file that should come up when it's opened, should tell you all you need to know I think. This hasn't been extensively tested, but I have slapped it on two of my characters so far and both times it worked just fine so it should work for you too if you set it up right, and your eyes are made in a compatible way.
Alright that's it. If you end up using this in anything and like how it turns out, lemme know I'd love to see!
Comments
Ruaidri
Other than the eyelids, which do use a couple of bones, it's all shape keys. Just a ton of shape keys. Sad eyebrows, angry eyebrows, happy mouth, sad mouth, angry mouth, and a sort of "O" shape mouth. Then a few controls to make them easy to access. That's pretty much it!
chase
not sure what you use for rigging but would love to know how you make your face rigs
Iora
Great work! Budding Blender user here and I'm always interested in even just "this is a concept/technique you can use". I'm also a programmer by trade, so I'm looking forward to digging into the guts of Blender at some point so little (but very useful) things like this will be really cool to play with once I get to that point. Thanks!
Ruaidri
Oh nice! Lemme know how it turns out. :P
Othello
Procedural saccades, nice.
Flapcats
This is god send, Im definitely gonna grab this. Will try it out on an animation Im finishing up; those small eye darts are definitely great place to automate Also very fun to see how your rigging is set up š·
Stargazer
This is so cool. Iād love more tutorials and tips on animation and rigging in general. Those things are so tough for me xD
Sentharn
Eye see what you did here!
Ruaidri
Hey, well I'm glad y'all enjoy seeing the behind the scenes stuff too! Honestly it's something I should do more often, I just get too distracted making stuff to stop and talk about how I made the stuff a lot of the time. x3
Bloudin Ruo
I'm not an animator but can I just say how awesome it is that you take the time to show how, provide models and such for the things you do? I know tons of people appreciate this, and pulling back the curtain really does show how much goes into the stuff you do. I for one enjoy these glimpses into your process, even if I can't use the systems you explain. It's fun! Thanks Ru :3
SneakyLupine
Thanks for this š
