Simple Eye Rig

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Víctor Paredes
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Simple Eye Rig

Post by Víctor Paredes »

Hi,
I got the 404 message from Imgur (http://imgur.com/gallery/uyiduyhiu) and seeing that animal eyes following the mouse, I got an idea to reproduce it in Moho.
The rig is relatively simple and uses a "Maximum IK Stretching" trick I use a lot. I'm not sure if it's new or maybe someone already posted a similar technique here, so please tell me if I'm stealing someone else's ideas :roll:

Anyway, I created a tutorial showing how it works and how to create it:


And here's the final file:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/544 ... s_rig.moho

PS: The Imgur 404 message "rig" is different from the one I created. Instead of having one target for each pupil, every pupil follows the same target (which is the mouse pointer). That gives the animals the possibility to point the pupils to the center when the mouse is in between of the two eyes.
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synthsin75
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by synthsin75 »

Great way to constrain bone translation. Here's a quick edit to allow animating both how you've rigged and how the Imgur eyes work.

http://www.filedropper.com/eyesrigedited
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by Víctor Paredes »

synthsin75 wrote:Great way to constrain bone translation. Here's a quick edit to allow animating both how you've rigged and how the Imgur eyes work.
http://www.filedropper.com/eyesrigedited
That's is a simple clever way to do it and the best part is it doesn't force the animator to choose one or the other way. Thanks!
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by Lychee »

Nice job again Selgin.

I tried a small improvement of your idea by adding a smartbone to play with perspective.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m62bzlsvelnbc ... .moho?dl=0
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by synthsin75 »

Great rig, Lychee. I used to do eyes like that with a more complex bone rig, before we had smart bones. Hadn't thought to revisit the idea.
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by Víctor Paredes »

That's very cool, Lychee.
I agree with Wes, I also used to do a lot of this "machines" before Smart Bones appeared. Rigging was fun at that time, but painful too :roll:
What I like about this one is it uses Smart Bones, Targets, IK stretching and Ignore IK, so it's a powerful rig that looks "old school", but actually couldn't be done before Moho 12.
Thanks for sharing it!
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by Lychee »

Hello.

I did once again a small improvement to control 2 eyes with less bones, simply control the length and rotation of the second "look bone" by the first.
See for example my file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wck06k3xj9wja ... .moho?dl=0
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by synthsin75 »

Nice. Here's your eyes, with the same change I made to Victor's, so the eyes can follow the same target or move in unison.
http://www.filedropper.com/selgineyestipedited
chucky
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by chucky »

Ahhahahaaa!
Absolutely fantastic!!.
I have trying to get that eye perspective desperately for a job I'm doing but could not get it.
Thanks so much everyone for putting in this collaborative effort, you just helped me out massively as I was about to post a thread asking if anyone had worked this out.

You are ally brilliant! :D :D

Of course the only thing is now we have to be super vigilant not to delete the length key from those bones.

I have Wes' lock script , but.... hmmm
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by synthsin75 »

chucky wrote:Ahhahahaaa!
Of course the only thing is now we have to be super vigilant not to delete the length key from those bones.

I have Wes' lock script , but.... hmmm
I typically just copy that key to frame zero and delete the frame one key. That way it is 'locked-in' after a fashion (deleting all keyframes or whole animations, like from the menu command, won't remove it). You can always undo it by copying a 100% scale key to frame zero.

I left it in so people less familiar with the technique might be less confused.
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by chucky »

I typically just copy that key to frame zero and delete the frame one key. That way it is 'locked-in' after a fashion (deleting all keyframes or whole animations, like from the menu command, won't remove it). You can always undo it by copying a 100% scale key to frame zero.

I left it in so people less familiar with the technique might be less confused.
Ohh yeah :) :mrgreen:
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by Lychee »

synthsin75 wrote:I typically just copy that key to frame zero and delete the frame one key
It would be really cool that someone of the Moho staff (Selgin if you hear me?...) to add in the next update (soon please :() this feature in Offset Bone and be able to play on the size to have the bone on frame zero compressed "properly".

Or "simply" add the ability in Maximum IK Stretching to set a negative value to compress the bone rather than stretch it.

Example: -100 to reduce bone to 100%.

What do you think about it?
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by synthsin75 »

I'm almost certain negative values in the IK stretching has been requested already. Likely the first second following Victor coming up with this technique.
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by chucky »

Is there a problem with the middle ( or centred ) position because the stretching bone can't go to zero , because that changes it to a pin bone, which is impossible?
I'm finding that a rig which is not a giant sized as lychee's version that the centre position is very twitchy and fiddley to rig.
There are problems with bones snapping to wrong positions and spinning pupils.

It is one of those rigs that works brilliantly in isolation but is not great when put inside a full character rig,
Scale, and parenting get in the way.
If you parent one eye for positioning in a head turn then you lose control though the manipulate bone tool and can only use the transform bone tool.
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synthsin75
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Re: Simple Eye Rig

Post by synthsin75 »

chucky wrote:Is there a problem with the middle ( or centred ) position because the stretching bone can't go to zero , because that changes it to a pin bone, which is impossible?
I'm finding that a rig which is not a giant sized as lychee's version that the centre position is very twitchy and fiddley to rig.
There are problems with bones snapping to wrong positions and spinning pupils.
There's two ways to center the bone and pupil. Either mess with your grid settings (ctrl+shift+G) until you find a grid size that evenly splits your pupil, or place your bone first and hold shift+alt when drawing the pupil with the shape tool, which allows you to draw a perfect circle centered on where you start drawing (the pivot of the bone).

It does take precision to get rid of any wobble, but it can be done.
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