Black Bead Eyes ... with "eyelids"

[SplineSoup]

I'm working on rigging a character right now that has black bead eyes (like the Peanuts characters) that can track slightly around his face to give him the illusion of looking around. I'd like to add a bit of expressiveness to his eyes by adding equally simplified eyelids that would render as a flat line or an arc. To do this, I created flattened spheres and pose sliders to control their up/down and arc properties. I was just about to start with poses that would conceal the eyes as the lids close but stopped when I realized I was about to have a huge problem with this approach: if the eyes are looking anywhere but straight ahead, I had no strategy for making sure they stayed matched up with my eyelid positions, which are parented to the head.

 

I'm curious if anybody has suggestions for rigging a head with black bead eyes so that the eyes interact correctly with visible eyelids. The combination of eye movement and blink percentages is giving me an interesting puzzle. Some possible directions I've considered are boolean cutters, decals, "maybe expressions...something-something?", and giving up and just animating the eyes frame by frame (eek!).

To maintain the look of this character, I'd like to avoid actually having eyelids protruding from his face to cover over and mask his eyes.

Any suggestions or lessons from experience are much appreciated!

Chris

 

[largento]

Using decals is an option I've considered before. It would be a kind of non-intuitive setup, but you've got 200 decals/frames available to set up on a slider. Grouping them would help. With time, you'd eventually memorize where they are.. Obviously, you probably wouldn't use 200. And using a very small amount might give it a stop motion/nervous effect. As if his eyes dart from side to side and his blinks are fast. But inbetweens could be added, too.

I used to have a plug-in for Flash that was designed for this kind of setup.

I suppose, that if you did know how to write expressions, you could create some sort of interface that would go to the correct frame and work like having eye bones.

I assume it's the way they do the facial features on this "Bubble Guppies," which looks quite appealing.

 

[robcat2075]

I'm not clear on what the eyelids are now.  Are they the edge of a half sphere?

Is the final render flat-shaded or 3D shaded?

[SplineSoup]

The eyelids are, in fact, flattened and distorted spheres that protrude out of the character's head. I figured this would give me the flexibility to punctuate his "extreme" looks with visible eyelids but then hide them the rest of the time by pulling them back into his head and just stretch or narrow the eye-beads for most expressions. The connection between the lids and his eyes is a challenge I'm pondering.

As for the output styling, I'm thinking flat shading but, in reality, I'll probably end up with some sort of hybrid blending of toon and 3D shading like this:

In any case, the presence of actual, skin-toned eyelids would leave undesired traces on the existing face geometry in the way of toon shadows. To simplify this challenge, I think just focusing on these eye beads would be a good step for now, without separate lids. Here's a quick diagram of what I'm thinking:

 

The eyes would sit within an invisible boundary such that they could appear (1) their full size, (2) roll up or down into an imagined eyelid boundary, or (3) be obscured by the boundary line closing. I like the idea of creating decal poses for discreet eye shapes (ala Bubble Guppies) and will look into that further, though for this character I'd like to keep the eyes 3D. Holmes Bryant had an interesting tutorial on animating distortion boxes that I looked at a while back that could be used for things like flat tires. Perhaps this is a viable option for eyelids, as well?

I'll see what I get later this week.

Chris