Progress Report 5/5/2023 (Patreon)

Hello again, everyone! Here's what I got done this week:

• Rigged the 3D model's irises/pupils so that they follow the eye tracker without issue (so far)
• Rigged the model's eyelids and eyelashes to open and close
• Fixed the normals on the model's eyelids so they don't look hiddeous when they close
• Set up the Metarig so that most of the changes to the eye tracking are kept after re-generation
• Modified Metarig controls that were either too large or hidden inside the face

Rigging is hard, yo. Especially with something as important as the eyes; they need to be right or else the model will look robotic and fake... or worse. So much worse...

Fortunately, the time I've dumped into them this week seems to have paid off! See for yourself:

Just think: at the beginning of the week, they barely budged an inch!

It took a looooot of trial and error to find the right combination of specific changes to ensure the eyes don't roll right off the face, or into the eye whites, or into each other, or... just a lot of other things going wrong. @-@

I made sure they look good from different angles, too!

Slagathor knows what you did.

And, of course, who can forget the eyelids? These things gave me a LOT of trouble, combined with the eyelashes. The bulk of my week went into working and reworking the weight painting on them. Sometimes things went relatively smoothly, other times I straight up had to reset the Metarig because of some small problem that couldn't be resolved otherwise. Don't even get me started on the weight painting, itself...

But, I love the results! I even got the eyes to close in a u_u shape and a ^_^ shape, although both would be far better off as shape keys given some quirks that I'm unable to work out with bones alone.

Other than that, the eyelashes do need a teensy bit more work, but after that it's onto the next facial feature! I anticipate the lips taking about as much time (if not more) than the eyes, given not only their importance in facial expressions but also the many ways they can move around. But before that, I've got a date with a pair of eyebrows!

And before THAT, I've got a date with a big ol' bag of Taco Bell! I'd give you more details, but a gentleman never munches and tells. I'll see you guys again next week!