How do you Rig and Animate a flat surface eyeball in 3DSMax for Unity?

madmuffin

I have a flat plane with an inset on it, on which my eye texture sits inside of the head. To 'look around' I want to make the center polygon slide around the flat plane perfectly perpendicular (is that the word?) but the only way I know how to rig or animate anything is with bones, and bones either spin in place or hinge, they cant move around free floatingly on a plane (or if they can, I don't know how to do that.)

Am I am making sense? How do I achieve this effect, and then bring it into Unity so I can make my character's eyes move around and look at stuff? Making the eyes into spheres and rotating that with a bone is not an option, also I wanted to be able to scale the pupil up and down somehow as well, so if anyone has any idea how to animate that as well, I'd appreciate it, because as far as I know, I cant rig a bone to get bigger and smaller.

monster

You can use Point or Dummy helper objects as bones in a skin modifier. (Actually you can use anything.) When you export to FBX for Unity just make sure to check "Convert Deforming Geometry to Bones".

You can also move bones freely if you turn off their "Bone" setting. Go to Animation > Bone Tools > Object Properties and uncheck Bone On. I almost always do this, it's safe and has no affect on exporting to Unity.

cookiegirl14

i had a similar problem.

just make an eye and texture it like normal, then use modifiers to faltten it.

rig it like a normal eye and boom! you're done.
hoped this help!

as for exporting for unity, i don't know, i don't have unity