CC Sphere-like Movement?

[WatchMotion]

Hey all, wondering if anyone's had to make anything like this in Moho? Specifically, the eye and details that seem to warp over a sphere - painfully easy in AE using CC Sphere, which is what I assume the artist is using here. Obviously, usual head rigging methods come to mind, maybe using a mesh - just thought there had to be an easier way?


https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/cont ... ormat=500w

[synthsin75]

For an image, Scripts>Image>Spherical Panorama or Fisheye could be used for that.

[Greenlaw]

Do you mean like this?



That was an interesting challenge. I'm a bit busy this morning, but I can post the project file with an explanation later.

In the meantime, would anybody else like to accept the challenge? I'm curious to see what techniques other users come up with.

[Greenlaw]

Ok, here we go...

I tried a few different approaches last night, some involving multiple Actions or different mesh warp types, but all of them failed. Then this morning I woke up with a simpler idea in mind...and it worked!

Basically, I have a single Action that squishes the iris whenever the 'iris' bone is moved away from the center of the eyeball. The tricky part was figuring out how to keep the squished iris properly aligned with the edge of the big eyeball. Here is my solution:



At the top is a Smart Bone Dial (SBD) called 'squisher'. When it's rotated to the left, this SBD squishes the layer with the small 'iris' circle, seen on the far left. 'squisher' is automatically rotated by following a target bone called 'squisherTgt' which is parented to the end of the bone called 'eyeHub', located in the center of the eyeball. 'eyeHub' is targeting the 'iris' bone, so it rotates to follow its movement. Additionally, 'eyeHub' has the stretch constraint enabled so it stretches to the edge of the eyeball artwork and stops there (as shown in the picture.)

And now the tricky bit: The 'iris' bone has a rotation constraint set to follow the rotation of the 'eyeHub' bone. This keeps the squished iris correctly oriented not matter where the 'iris' bone is moved to. And since the 'squisher' SBD is parented to the 'eyeHub' bone, it's always correctly oriented to follow the 'squisherTgt' bone.

Finally, since I don't want to touch any bone but the 'iris' and 'root' bones when animating this setup, I have all the other bones set to Shy Bone. (If you're using MQC, these bones can be easily revealed and hidden by clicking the Show Shy button.) Here's what the final setup looks like, ready for animation...



Here's the project file if you'd like to examine it...

eyeRig.moho

This wasn't difficult to set up once I got the mechanics figured out, but I'm still wondering if there isn't a simpler solution.

Anyway, I hope you find this helpful, or at least interesting.

P.S., BTW, if you move the iris slowly, you'll find the rate of the squish animation as it move toward the edge isn't quite right. As an exercise, you can try tweaking the animation in the 'squish' Smart Bone Action. This is probably a good place to use Bezier keys and edit with the Graph Editor.

[synthsin75]

The only problem I have with that rig is that it's spinning the iris. For a simple eye, this is no problem, but for a complex eye, you'd be able to see that it's spinning.

But this was my first idea too. I'll have to look through my files and see if I ever came up with a better solution though. Might not have.

[Greenlaw]

Yeah, that did occur to me, but I wanted to match the OP's example first.

I have an idea for a more detailed eye. I'm not sure it will work but will give it a shot.

[synthsin75]

With a quick test, it looks like you could just squash with a smart mesh, the mesh and iris layer-bound to the same bone. Just change your smart bone to squish the mesh instead.

Haven't tried in on your rig yet.

[Greenlaw]

I placed a realistic iris in the project, and inserted that in a group. The group was then parented to the 'iris' bone. As expected, the iris rotated with the movements, which is NOT what we want...but I noticed that when I rotated the layer inside the group, I could counter-rotate the iris art while keeping the alignment of the group distortion. This isn't terribly useful for rigging but the idea is right.



But...I think using a mesh in place of the group layer, as you suggest, might do the trick.

I don't think I have time to try that myself right now but here's the project with the realisitic Iris if anybody else wants to try...

eyeBallRealistic.zip

(I've disabled masking in this version to make it easier to work with. You'll probably want to remove the Layer Bind on that group.)

[Greenlaw]

Here's a marked iris:

irisMarked.png

You can temporarily replace the iris in the project with this one to help you see if it's constantly pointing in the same direction.

[Greenlaw]

Taking another look at this with the realistic iris.

Shoot, can't seem to get around an 'order of operations' thing...not with bones and meshes anyway.

I can get it work work in a simpler test too, so I feel like I'm overlooking something.

Here's what I've tried so far:

Since I'm able to rotate the image layer inside the mesh, I figured I'd just bind the image to an 'irisLeveler' bone and enable Independent Angle for rhat bone. I thought this should 'counter-rotate' the image inside the mesh, but for some reason, this rotates the mesh's 'squish' deformation too.

I also tried a few variations, using another target for the 'irisLeveler' bone instead of Independent Angle, and using nested meshes so I can point bind the image instead of layer binding or flexi-binding...but no luck yet.

Welp, need to move on to other things now. Maybe somebody else will have this solved before I come back to it.

[gilcartunista]

Hi! this is an example of the Incredible Victor Paredes, posted a long time ago...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IOh38x ... sp=sharing

[synthsin75]

Victor's great example still has the rotation problem.

[synthsin75]

Okay, solved it.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bon ... .moho?dl=0

EDIT: I added some scaling to the gif to complete the illusion.

[Greenlaw]

Okay, solved it.

Ha ha! You sure did.

That's very cool Wes. Looking forward to picking apart your example.

[synthsin75]

Way simpler solution using only a smart mesh:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/x9c ... .moho?dl=0