Maya Eyes

Rigging
1

Hello everyone,

I’m currently finishing off another alien rig for a VFX project and it’s all working out fine except with the eyes.

I’ve created a simple eye controller, using the Aim Constraint to have that control the eyes. Then I parented the controller to the head controller. Now whenever I move the head controller the eyes don’t follow the head correctly, they end up slipping into the main mesh.

How do I go about making the eyes stay where they’re placed on the face and once rotated, move with the mesh when animated?

I’ve tried;
Parenting the eyes to the head joint and then aim constraint to the eye controllers but no dice.

Help appreciated. Thanks!

2

Hi Danie.
Try putting the eye into a group node. Have the group node parent constraint to the eye joint. Then have the eye aimed constrained to the aim control.
You can also point and orient constraint the aim control to the head control and world. That way you can have the aim control following the head or just by itself in world.

Make sure that the group node is perfectly aligned with the eye. easy way to do this is by parent constraining the group to the eye, then deleting the constraint.

I hope that will work.
Good luck!

3

Thanks for your input Dimitri.

Unfortunately, no success, it’s still not following the mesh. I’m not using joints in the eyes (didn’t see the need for them) as they weren’t skinning to the eyes at all.

Any other input? Thanks. :S

EDIT:
Okay, I managed to keep the eyes following the head when rotated, but now the aim constraints wont work because of the eyes’s pivot points. I’ve tried the “Modify -> Center Pivot” action but the pivot doesn’t follow the eye when it rotates, so I can only animate the aim constraint when the character is in it’s default pose.

Any suggestions on this?

4

Are you sure that the direction the aim constraint points agrees with the object’s rotation axis? Sometimes I notice that can mess up my aim constraints.

5

Double Transformation! You can try checking through the hierarchy :):

6

Hm, not sure what happened, but one file with the alien in worked and the other didn’t, so my friend is just using the file that worked out. No idea what was happening.

I think it’ was to do with the pivot points of the eyes and importing objects into maya from max.