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What's the best way to make production ready eyes of a 3d character?

focus_method
focus_method
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focus_method polycounter lvl 5
Hi,
I think focus of my question is on eye lids and it's proper animation when character blinks.
what is the industry standard of making a 3d character (im talking about stylized but i want my question to be applyed on realistic chracters too) when we talk about eyes ?
I am confused about eye lids, how to make it production ready?
do you make a character with closed eyes or eyes open? if this makes sense.
Im afraid if character is with open eyes then how can eye blink be exectuted without bad mesh deformation? maybe the upper eye lids mesh is too short to touch lower one?

hope you understood my question.
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  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    Just do some blendshapes. If the first does work the others will too. This is normally done during preproduction. Or is documented in the pipeline docs. 
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  • CheeseOnToast
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    CheeseOnToast greentooth
    Here's an example I did recently, based on the system here. You can get away with relatively few loops, depending on your usage. Up-close cinematics might need more, third-person over-the-shoulder cameras will need less fidelity. Unless the character will have its eyes closed for a lot of of the time, blinks etc. are too fast to pick up on any small issues. Note that the eyeball "pulls" at the eyelid - it's worth making these extra blendshapes for more convincing eye movement if you can.

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  • focus_method
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    focus_method polycounter lvl 5
    ok, now i get it. Thanks a lot guys. You're awasome !!! 
    I wanted to know what's happening with the eyelid. So eyelid  mesh is stretching.
    I love how the eyeball "pulls" at the eyelid.
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  • CheeseOnToast
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    CheeseOnToast greentooth
    When it comes to baking, you might want to pose the lids half-closed. This helps stop the texture getting too stretched /squashed when animated. I usually set up a couple of layers in Zbrush for this - one to open the mouth a little and another to half-close the eyes.
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  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    Download one of the Metahuman and take a look.
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  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    focus_method said:
    do you make a character with closed eyes or eyes open? if this makes sense.
    I also had this question, until I learned that you as the modeler should be able to change the eyelid many times throughout the making of that character. So it's not really about "do I start with it closed or open", but "how can I quickly/easily switch between closed and open eyelid shapes?"

    Whether you're modeling for real-time or for offline rendering, I suggest making the eyelids like this: start by modeling them half closed like sleepy eyes, just to get the topology right (the amount and the flow of edge loops). Their shape at this moment is not important and it's okay if it deviates a bit from your character design. 
    After that, take this eyelid geometry that you just made and reshape it into the polished "eyelid open" shape, then reshape it again into the polished "eyelid close" shape, fully following your reference character design. So now you have two shapes for the eyelid geometry --open and closed-- and you're sure that they both look good. Using the blendshape / shape key functionality in your modeling app you can alternate between these two shapes as needed (when baking or UV mapping, when weight-painting, when making corrective blendshapes that interact with the eyelids etc).

    Those are my notes for modeling.
    For (facial) rigging you can go after these excellent resources:
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