Need help with rigging eyes

Wrath

I'm using Max8. Have a couple of eyeballs, linked to dummy objects. The dummy objects are using a look at controller to orient them to a target. This is all fine and dandy, target moves around, eyeballs track it...great. However, if the head rotates too far, or the target moves behind the head, the eyes completely roll around. This is not great.

So basically I'm looking for a way to set rotational limits on either the eyes themselves, or the dummy objects they're linked to. I've tried adding limit controllers...doesn't work. I've thought about wiring the rotation of the eyeballs to the dummy object and using an expression to limit them, but there are no relevant parameters.

Has anyone figured out a good way to rig eyeballs? Even if it's in another package, maybe seeing how it's done in Maya might give me an idea I can use in Max.

thomasp

wouldn't parenting the lookat-target to the character head bone be an option? that's what i do all the time. i block in the head motion and then go and adjust eye target positions.

for a situation where you wanted to keep the eyes focused on something while the head moves, i guess you could use a link controller and animate that.

otherwise, search for eye rig on cgtalk. i remember seeing a thread about it, however it was most likely maya-related.

Eric Chadwick

Have you tried IK? You can set limits for the eye bones.

Illusions

Ok, heres the setup I remember from Father Wicked (my zombie character from my Something Wicked short animation). A rig was setup with bones coming off the head to control the eyes. Each individual eye (seperate from the mesh) was skinned to its appropriate eye bone. I made a spline in the shape of his head, put it a few units in front of his head. Inside that I made a rectangular spline that in the front view, surrounded his eyes. Then I put two dummy objects in that rectangle to line up with his pupils. Ok, bone and control spline setup is complete at this point.

I then set each eye bone to look-at the appropriate dummy. The dummies were then parented to the rectangle spline. The rectangle was then parented to the 'head' spline. The head bone was then set to look-at the head spline. Minor adjustments were done to attributes to get the look-at right. At this point, if you wanted, you could probably set rotational limits for the eyebones. I don't remember if I did it for the Father or not, but you can set the 'head' control spline to look at the neck bone in your character.

Now if you want the character to look around, move the head control spline to get the right head turn, then use the rectangular control to move both eyes together. Then, if you need to, reposition the dummies to get the eyes to look in different directions seperately (if if you wanted him to focus up close on something, go cross-eyed, etc).

http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php...=true#Post90383

Ok, yeah...is this what you're looking for? (Scroll down to Father Wicked)