morphing eyelashes

[Drakaran]

I'm creating a figure and doing the finishing touches on the head. I have started adding 3D tube-type eyelashes and wondering how that will work when I rig and start morphing expressions. I figure I'll need the lashes in the same layer as the head and rest of the body so I don't have problems when the body is turned, etc.

My question is: can I keep the lashes in a seperate layer while I'm doing the facial morphs and later add them to the face/body layer and the morph can still find em, or an I gonna have to do the morphs with the eyelashes already in the same layer with the face?

I've never morphed before, or rigged, so I have some apprehension about it.

Drakaran

[evenflcw]

Sure, you can have the eyelashes in a separate layer (and later place them in the main layer and everything should still work), but you'll have to use Follower or somesuch for every relevant endomorph to have it morph along with the main layer (otherwise you'll have to keyframe the morphs for each layer separatly), and use the "Use Bones from Object" option in the Bones Properties panel to have the lashes effected by the same bones as the body in the main layer. Easy to setup and doable, but I would've probably just placed everything in the same layer as I don't really understand your reasons not to.

[TyVole]

You might want to think about using SasLite for eyelashes.

As long as you apply it on a surface (and not with hair guides), you won't need to worry about morph movements.

[Drakaran]

Originally posted by TyVole
You might want to think about using SasLite for eyelashes.



Well... hmm. Since I'm using LW 6.5 (which doesn't come with sassy lite....). Also, I have been refining the poly hair technique, so using 3d tube eyelashes is completely fitting. just trying to keep those rotated etc correctly as the eye closes is gonna be a drag. That's why I was asking if you can morph em in another chan and then add em to the main body layer after (so I can group select easily. Maybe there's another way to quickly select a group of tiny polys? Some said something about name the surfaces so you can select em with the statistics window, but I'm not sure what he meant by that....

Thanks for the responses!

[TyVole]

I believe Stuart Aitken in the Inside LightWave books specifically wrote that 3d tube method of eyelashes was not good for morphing.

[Drakaran]

yeah, it's a pretty good book. He doesn't say WHY they aren't a good target (and that was written for 6.0 (the one I have at least...) I wonder if they tend to vibrate or Gizmo has trouble with em or what? I DID find out that while you are in polygon mode, you can bring up statistics and select polys by their surface names. I decided to rename my lips so they will be easier to render (well and texture) later on.

Thanks for the help... If I can't do em for morph targets maybe I can just fake em as long as I don't do any real close closeup work on the head. *shrug*

*CHEERS!*

[evenflcw]

The problem with using endomorphs for eyelids (and their attached eyelashes) is that LWs morphs are linear, so the vertices will only travel in a straight line from point A to point B, not along the curvature of the eye. Depending on the circumstances it might work out ok, but for higher quality work you should look for other solutions. For example you could set up several morph that work together to simulate an arched path. Or you could paint weightmaps and use a bone to control each eyelid. This is probably the best option as it is fairly quick and easy to set up and gives good results. I think you could even use an expression to tie the bone rotation to an endomorph channel so you would still have all the control within MorphMixer.

[Drakaran]

Tie the bone into endomorph? that's brilliant if I can get it to work. I figure they must do something. Eye blinking is a common task to face with animation. Thanks again.