Lets talk about eyelids.

Brandon.LaFrance

Like the titles says. How do you handle eyelids? Particularly for next-gen, realistic characters, with a focus on fidelity of animation and expression. Do you sculpt with eyes closed and let the riggers sort it out? Eyes open? Best practice for topology?

All of my work has pretty much ignored the issue up until this point. I have been sculpting the eyes open, but have never attempted any facial rigging. I suspect that this could cause headaches further down the pipeline, but I really have no idea. Am I over-thinking this?

MikeF

any time i've dealt with setting up eyelids for animation i have my modelers do eyes closed. All but one time i've used blend shapes to get them moving, the only exception was on a really old engine where i had to manually keyframe the verts.

As far as topology goes, it really depends just how expressive you're getting. I've never had to go for hyper detail, so usually a few rows of nicely spaced quads will fold up nicely without any distortion

ZacD

I know Naughty Dog for last of us had the characters modeled with their mouths half way open and their eyes half way closed. The idea behind it was that having it between open and closed means there will be less stretching to get to your desired animation poses.

EarthQuake

Yeah, I think its also typical for an artist to model eyes/mouth close to get the right look(because modeling eyes closed/mouth open is just weird), and then set up blend shapes to close them for better uvs/rigging.

Mark Dygert

Because topology and vert counts can change and some modelers don't like making morphs, sometimes 2, 3, 4 times, I think it's best to create a lower poly face mesh (that won't change vert count) and do your open closed morphs/blend shapes on that and then skinwrap your WIP head to it to animate it back and forth between approval pose and the bake/rigging pose. That way the topo on the WIP head can change without messing up your morphs, you can also share that low poly face mesh between models and use the conform brush in max to get it to match the new WIP model.

I don't think you have to close eyelids all the way but have them close enough that the UV's can capture more than just a pixel or two of eyelid shadow/crease. Some people don't understand just how far the upper eyelid stretches and just don't care about giving it enough UV space to look decent and avoid dirty eyelids. Dirty eyelids are fine if your characters wear eye shadow, bad if they don't...

As for mouths it's infinitely easier to skin up a slightly opened mouth and it even makes it easier to work symmetrically if the verts aren't within weld tolerance. It's always frustrating when you work on a closed mouth and don't realize that the upper and lower lips are welded together until you go to open the mouth for the first time. God help you if you already started making brow and eyelid morphs... heh.

Brandon.LaFrance

Thanks for the the knowledge, everyone. I think I will begin doing the half-open approach as it seems to be the best compromise between usability and presentation.

Mark, its great to get an animators perspective on the topic. I have begun using a similar practice with mouths. In ZBrush, I'll open the mouth on a dedicated layer, then turn that layer's visibility off while working. Turning it on every once in a while to make sure everything is still in order. I will begin using the same technique with the eyes.

Mark Dygert

Totally, it also helps to do something similar for wrinkle maps, in the brows, around the eyes, the corners of the nose and mouth.

Blond

I've never had much problems with them really and I rig them with Joint.

When they are properly modeled, joints do the job.
For my latest project, I've seen Judd simatov workflow and I decied to model them mid-open for smoother binding and better animation result.

My biggest problem with eyelid is not the eye Lid itself but the eyelashes that a quite tricky to bind when you want them to bend when the eye LIds closes.

Mark Dygert

For the final rig I prefer joints too, but skinning up a joint on a work in progress mesh is a pain, especially if the topology changes and you have to redo the skinning.

For eyelash skinning there is a simple trick for that.

• Clone/detach the strip of polys where the eye lashes connect to the eyelid.
• Skin wrap it to the head mesh (which should be skinned to bones).
• Then skinwrap the eyelashes to the poly strips and crank up the settings until the tips follow along. This way the eyelashes only follow a specific strip of polys and won't get confused by the rest of the mesh.
• As you change the skin weights on the eyelids the eyelash skinwrap updates.
• Then when everything is pretty much set, you can convert to skin (option inside of skinwrap) and the eyelashes have the exact weights of the polys on the face.
• Delete the poly strips and you're done.

skankerzero

I don't have issues modeling my eyes open, but I do UV them as if they were shut.

crazyfool

heres the vid to naughty dogs rig setup on the last of us. great insights as mentioned

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myZcUvU8YWc"]Judd Simantov on character rigging and modeling in Naughty Dog's The Last of Us - YouTube[/ame]

Blond

Mark Dygert wrote: »

For the final rig I prefer joints too, but skinning up a joint on a work in progress mesh is a pain, especially if the topology changes and you have to redo the skinning.

For eyelash skinning there is a simple trick for that.

• Clone/detach the strip of polys where the eye lashes connect to the eyelid.
• Skin wrap it to the head mesh (which should be skinned to bones).
• Then skinwrap the eyelashes to the poly strips and crank up the settings until the tips follow along. This way the eyelashes only follow a specific strip of polys and won't get confused by the rest of the mesh.
• As you change the skin weights on the eyelids the eyelash skinwrap updates.
• Then when everything is pretty much set, you can convert to skin (option inside of skinwrap) and the eyelashes have the exact weights of the polys on the face.
• Delete the poly strips and you're done.

THk you sir.