I have a problem with eyes

[Archamedes]

See included picture. As you can see the problem, the pupil leaves the boundary of the eyeball. is there a way to mask it rather than creating a lower eyelid?

[Greenlaw]

If I can assume you created the art in a paint program, you should go back to your paint program and separate the white part of the eye from the rest of the face. I see you already separated the irises, so place that behind the face. Now, make sure the layer with the white part is behind the layer or layers with the irises. This is the most straightforward way to do it before importing the art to Moho.

But if you'd rather do this inside Moho, use Create Mesh Layer to add a mesh for the face. This feature lets you punch holes in the face where the eyes go. The advantage of this method is that you can use the mesh to deform the face layer and close the eyelids.

For the white part, you can either use a non-deforming duplicate of the face layer or just make the white and gray elements using a vector layer. The latter is probably more efficient and gives you added flexibility. (It might even be easier to set up.)

For example...



Hope this helps.

[Greenlaw]

Here's the project file if you want to examine it. The setup is a bit sloppy because it's only meant to be a demo...

Download: eyeHoles.zip



First, I separated the irises to another layer in my paint program. (I used Photoshop, but any paint program that supports layered PSD will work.) I also cut the nose to a separate layer to cover up distortions that may occur when I close the character's eyes. If you wish, you can cut out the eye holes and make the white parts a separate layer, but I didn't bother to do that for this example. Plus, I wanted to show how the Warp Mesh Layer can be used to do that.

The purple lines in the image are what I drew after creating the Mesh Warp Layer. These lines are guides you can use to animate the mesh. As described earlier, I knocked out the eye holes by drawing closed shapes in the Mesh Warp layer. I also drew guidelines outside the eye holes to hold the artwork to prevent unwanted distortions.

Finally, I made a Smart Bone Action called Eyes Closed to animate the eyelids closing.

Tip: Set the bone strength of the iris bones to 0 and use Layer Binding for the irises. This keeps the eye bones from deforming the face.

I hope this helps.

[Greenlaw]

Oh, one more note: In frame 0, the irises will disappear. This is because the Mesh Warp used to knock out the eyeholes doesn't take effect until frame 1. If you really want to see the eyes in frame 0, you should knock out the eye holes in your paint program. This extra prep can make the holes cleaner and hide the white matte edges visible in my animated GIF above.

[Archamedes]

Thanks for this. I did the upper eyelid early on, but as i got so engrossed in creating this in moho, by the time it came to setting up the animation controllers I noticed the problem and thought "damn" i knew i forgot something, but maybe there is an easier way.

[Hoptoad]

This is how I would do it without a mesh:

Create a Group layer.
Inside the Group layer create a vector layer called Left Iris. Create vector art of the character's left iris.
Duplicate Layer to make another iris, then rename it Right Iris. Translate Layer to move the iris into its position to the right.
Inside the Group Layer and BELOW the iris layers, create a new Vector Layer and name it Sclera. Create vector art of the white of the eye for both eyes.
Now go the Group folder and go to Layer Settings: Masking tab and check the box for Hide All. Then go the Layer Setting: Masking tab for the Sclera layer and check the box for Exclude Stroke. If the layers are in the right order in the group folder, the masking will keep the pupils in the sclera.

[Archamedes]

This is how I would do it without a mesh:

Create a Group layer.
Inside the Group layer create a vector layer called Left Iris. Create vector art of the character's left iris.
Duplicate Layer to make another iris, then rename it Right Iris. Translate Layer to move the iris into its position to the right.
Inside the Group Layer and BELOW the iris layers, create a new Vector Layer and name it Sclera. Create vector art of the white of the eye for both eyes.
Now go the Group folder and go to Layer Settings: Masking tab and check the box for Hide All. Then go the Layer Setting: Masking tab for the Sclera layer and check the box for Exclude Stroke. If the layers are in the right order in the group folder, the masking will keep the pupils in the sclera.

Thank you. I was messing around with the masking options but couldnt get to this result. Thanks you again