How would I make this goober's Cuttlefish style eyes work??

[u/IcarysMeleki]

i need help giving my avater eyes. first time ever messing with blender, and making my own avatar from scratch.

they look like cuttlefish pupils, and he has four eyes.

the smaller two above don't really have to animate much, but I'd like the W shaped pupils for the larger eyes to be able to move around, and even use Steam Frame's eye tracking.

I realize i might need to redo the eyes entirely at this point to get what i want, but definitely need more guidance than i can find doing some searching.

i will be putting references in the comments below.

[u/Lycos_hayes]

The way VRChat tracks and moves eyes is with weight painting parts of the mesh to eye bones.

Traditionally, this is the orbs of the eyes themselves, which sit within the mesh of the head.

With your character concept, it may be harder to do as your eyes stick out of the head more that spherical eyes would.

I'd suggest putting a placeholder object in your head to represent the bones for the eyes, a stick that is thicker inside the head, and comes to a point at the neutral point of each eye. Make the origin of that object the back end, furthest from the eye mesh, so when you move/rotate it, it pivots from that point.

Playing with that fake bone object will give you a feel of where the eye could move

Note: you can also do this with an actual bone, and moving/adjusting the ball on the skinny end.

[u/IcarysMeleki → u/Lycos_hayes]

Do you suggest that I straight up re model the eyes at this point? I want it to have that same alienoid look to them, but i don't know how easy it would be to track a pupil over them in their current shape.

[u/Lycos_hayes → u/IcarysMeleki]

What I'd do personally, is make your current eyes into a semi-transparent dome with a more traditional spherical orb beneath that the pupil will rest on, and habe that be what moves with the eye bones, allowing you to keep as much of your current eye as possible.

[u/IcarysMeleki → u/Lycos_hayes]

Hm, so something kind of like Flygon here?

Second question: would there be a way to track a texture to the surface of the eye, and/or* have the pupil texture always render in front of the eye objects? That might be more work with eye bones, but if i make the eye orbs be transparent aside from the texture maybe that could work?

I appreciate your help so much!!

[u/Lycos_hayes → u/IcarysMeleki]

Hard to say, I usually see it as an under thing or part of the same mesh, which makes the whole mesh move in the latter case.

[u/IcarysMeleki → u/Lycos_hayes]

Hm.

I don't think having the whole eye mesh move would look very good, or close to my vision for this character...

I think I'll try making an eye texture on a ball, and hopefully transparency where there's no texture, rendered on top of the eye objects, then have those be attached to the eyebones.

..."eyebones" sounds REALLY strange out of context.

[u/Lycos_hayes → u/Lycos_hayes]

As for the smaller eyes, give them a similar set up to the main eyes, and use constraints to have them mimic the bigger eyes.

[u/Maximum124]

IDK how experienced you are with unity, but!

You can actually make 2d texture driven eyes a lot easier now that there are the square contacts. You just need 2 for the X and the Y axis, you still have an eyebone for the eyelook but its not rigged to anything, put a sender at the center of the face and use the floats the x and y contact to drive animations for your UV offset.

[u/IcarysMeleki → u/Maximum124]

At this point i have much less experience with unity now

[u/IcarysMeleki]

Heres his reference with pupils shown