Moho has change substantially since version 1.0. Given its current, more powerful, incarnation, I decided to make an attempt at something a bit more 'realistic'. An eyeball is a natural choice, perhaps the 'Hello, World' of computer animation, and it is what I chose. Surprisingly, the work didn't require sequestering myself behind a desk for weeks either. The majority was done in less than eight hours, with a couple extra hours of minor alterations - much being rendering. This type of project lends itself to a bit of A.R., and one can spend copious amounts of time doing half a second of 'tweaking', more than the twelve seconds of animating required; however, I stopped before being consumed. The text and pictures below point out a few procedures I used.
I began with a square just larger than the aspect through which I 'cut' a hole the shape of the eye. The square was filled with a flesh colour. I applied a line colour to the edge of the cutout and used it as the eyelid. The eye was built behind the hole so all movement of the eye would happen 'behind' the eyelid. Shapes filled with tints lighter or darker than the flesh tone were layered on top to create a feeling of depth. I spent the least time on the eyebrow - it is a filled shape with a few darker lines placed ontop. One could place individual lines with tapered ends to achieve a more realistic look than what I produced here.
I didn't use any rotoscoping or image in the background techniques. These too may have helped in placing facial features in their correct positions. Rather I ran around and asked, "Look left. Look right. Look down. Watch me while I look down...does my eyebrow move?" If you have the equipment to put some video on the desktop for reference it will save you from having to endure grouchy family members and friends.
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In the brown circle you will see a couple of wrinkle lines caused by the eyebrow turning up. These were node animated lines that were turned visible, then faded in over 8 frames. The green circle highlights the muscle at the edge of the eye. This shape had a fill with a soft edge and was bone animated - there is a corresponding muscle on the other side which moves into better view when the eye looks up into the opposite corner. You may have noticed that some of the colours in the jpeg are different than those in the animation. The screenshots show the 'Animation' compression version. If you look at the same frame in the animation, which was compressed with Sorenson 3, you will also notice that the reflection, visible on the white of the eye in the jpeg to the left, has pretty well disappeared in the .mov. In fact, quite a few subtleties have vanished, but the upside is the 84% compaction over the 'Animation' compressed version. This wouldn't be an issue if you were outputting to video rather than rueing a lack of broadband. |
The pupil grew and shrunk using the scaling feature. What took more time was changing the perspective of the iris. The eye is, obviously, not flat. As the iris moves to the corner of the eye it is tipping away from the viewer and becomes a '3-D' object. A great way to accomplish this would be to have a way to include and exclude nodes across multiple layers which will be acted upon by the scaling feature simultaneously. As this is not possible I altered the nodes of the iris first, those farthest away from the viewer, to make an elliptical shape, thereby faking the feel of turning away. I also had to do this with the pupil. The 'colour splash' in the iris, the yellow-green shape, was also altered to fit into the ellipse. Although the difference is more evident when compared side-to-side, it changed the effect from one of a circle moving on a flat plane to one of a circle on a sphere.
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The feature that saved me the most time was the ability to animate a reversal over time. In the blink sequence shown to the left the eyelashes were moved along the edge of the eye during which time the nodes were also vertically reversed, resulting in an acceptably accurate three dimensional look. The highlight on the left side followed the lid down, growing in size, as did the shadow on the right. Both shapes were given an animated colour change to a lighter tint as the size grew. The line demarking the fold of the eyelid was given an animated transparency over the same frames. The line around the eyelid was darkened for one frame only, when the eye was completely shut. The coloured shape showing the eyelid "thickness" was turned invisible for this same frame. |
A thin edge of shadow under the top eyelid helped give thickness to the eyelid. One more thing to remember when animating a realistic eye is realizing that the cornea pushes out from the sphere of the eye, and, if you look at someone's eye in profile you can see that it sticks out a fair amount. Watch the shots in 'Final Fantasy' closely, as it looks like one of the few things it appears they missed (as I said, this kind of thing becomes A.R. real quickly). If you watch the reflections in the .mov you will see that they change relative to the cornea. It isn't something that jumps out a grabs you by the throat, and most animators would be insouciant to this amount of detail; however, after watching the animation both with and without, you realize that it nudges the unconcious part of you that notices without noticing.
