Creating Eye Accessories

Compared to other accessory types, the Eye Accessories have the most complicated structure for the puppeteering controls. The recommended structures are as listed below:

Suggested Eye Structures

The basic concepts of eye accessories can be categorized into three types as described below, however you may create any sort of structure for the eye accessories after you are acquainted with these concepts.

Human Eyes

Because the eyelashes are always stuck to the eyelids, A real human eye accessory is only divided into two parts.

  1. Eyelid with Lashes: a bone-skinned shell for the expressions and blinks of the eyes.
  2. Eyeball: for the rolling of the eyes.

* Please note that the disadvantage of this kind of eye accessories is that when you puppeteer them to blink, the previously recorded eyelid animations will be overwritten, and vice versa; because one eyelid has merely one animation track in the Timeline.

Monsters' Eyes (without eyelashes)

An eye accessory, for characters that are not humans, can be divided into three parts:

  1. Eyelid: a bone-skinned shell for the expressions of the eyes.
  2. Eyeball: for the rolling of the eyes.
  3. Eye Blink: additional membrane for the blinks of the eyes.

** The benefit of dividing eye accessories into three parts is that after they are puppeteered, the animation data of the three parts, especially the blinks, can be further edited in independent Timeline tracks.

Monster Eyes (with eyelashes)

An eye accessory, for characters that are not humans, can be divided into three parts:

  1. Eye Blink with Lashes: a shell that contains eyeball and eyelid. This shell is for creating blinks only.
  2. Eyeball: for the rolling of the eyes.
  3. Eyelid: additional membrane for the expressions of the eyes.

** The benefit of dividing eye accessories into three parts is that after they are puppeteered, the animation data of the three parts, especially the blinks, can be further edited in independent Timeline tracks.

Note:

For non-spherical eye accessories, please refer to the Sample Project.

Building Custom Prop

Before building a puppet-ready eye accessory, you need to first:

  1. Create a paired eyes with one of the structures shown above.
  2. Convert the paired eyes into custom props via 3DXchange.
  3. Attach the custom props to a "Pair" dummy in iClone.

Afterward, you are able to start creating a puppeteer-ready eye accessory.

Please refer to the following sections for more information.