Today I have been learning how to create and animate eyes, I searched for tutorials and followed one which I just couldn't get my head around, the quality of the video was rather poor and the narrator didn't explain things which was frustrating. I then found another tutorial which was run over a series this was much more detailed and explained techniques and interfaces on 3DS Max which was incredibly useful and because of this I learned a lot about the program which I didn't know.
Firstly I created a sphere, however for this I used the keyboard entry which allowed me to align is right in the centre of the stage.
The next thing I needed to do was to create an eyelid for my eyeball and to do this I created another sphere in the exact same place but made it very slightly bigger to overlap the whole of the eye ball. To create a split to from the eye lids I opened the modifer panel and it gave me the option to turn 'Slice on' I checked the box, and could then move the values of 'Slice from' and 'Slice to' this created the opening of the eye.
I then needed to create a visual point that the eye would follow, to do this I learned something new which was to go into the helpers tab and create a 'Point', I aligned the point to the centre of the eyeball and attached it, I then created another which I placed in front of the eye and created constraint for the point in the centre of the eye, I selected at the top of 3DS max Animation > Constraints > LookAt Constraint and selected the point in front of the eye, this meant that where ever the point in front of the eye moved, the eye would follow. Now I had the eye following the Points I needed both of them to follow one particular object so that the eyes were both looking at the same thing, I simply created another pointer, centred it between the two that the eyes were looking at and added a LookAt constraint from both Points to the centre point, and this would be the 'Parent'.
I also learned at this stage about layers in 3DS max, similar to adobe programs I was able to open the layer panel and create a new layer, in this window it allowed me to modify different settings, such as enabling that particular layer to be viewed or not when rendered.
The next stage was to clone what I had created and apply some materials which would make the eye look realistic and give it some pupils to show what they were looking at, in the tutorial the teacher creates his own using the material editor, however because he was creating eyes for a cartoon I felt that these were rather poor, so I decided to find some on-line, I search for eyeball textures and found a royalty free eye ball and skin texture. I applied the skin to the outer sphere creating the eyelids and the eyeball to the centre sphere which I then gave a UVM map to position in correctly.
The next step was to make the eye lids open and shut and to do this I needed to add a control which would allow me to open both the left and right eye lids together, I went into Helpers > Manipulators > Slider, I could then draw a slider on the stage, I renamed it according to the eye lid, top and bottom. I now needed to connect the slider to the eye lids, I right clicked the slide > Wire parameters, and then clicked on the eye lid, this opened a menu and I chose 'Value' and then Object > Slice to, this being the top half of the Sphere (Top eye lid), this opened up another window, which allowed me to connect the Value and the Slice to, and clicked the one way control direction, this means that the Value will control the Slice to, I then pressed connect and this finished the process.
Now that a slider has been assigned to the eye lid I was able to control the movement by moving the slider, however to do this I had to select the 'Select and Manipulate' tool at the top of the program to enable the use of the slider. In the modify panel with the slider selected I was able to set the minimum and maximum value that the eye lids would open, this meant that the eyes would open and close to realistic positions, as the movement is limited. I then did the same process with the slider and the wire parameters to the other eye so that one slider would control both eyes, I created 2 sliders in total, one for the movement of the top eye-lid and the other for the movement of the bottom eye-lid, and both eyes were controlled by the single sliders.
I am extremely happy with the out come of the eyes, I feel that they look amazing, and will be extremely easy to animate with the use of the sliders and the Auto-key, I will hopefully be attaching to my head some how, and should help give a realistic animation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op1_XY9NbNQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GtwOdTV0qA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH9d9oj_cFk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4JkYT9avgc
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