Rigging The Eyes

Before we continue on the rig the eyes, there's a couple of small things we need to do first.  Open the outliner, and expand the Character group, you can make the the Character_L Layer non-templated now too if you wish for better visualisation, now select the Nose and Head objects, then from the menu select Polygons > Combine, you will end up with one object called polySurface1, with polySurface1 still selected, select the Inner_Mouth_Group Group, and then again, go to Polygons > Combine, then go to Edit > Delete By Type > History, to remove all of the empty nodes.  Rename polySurface1 to Head, and then add it to the Character group, to do this, within the outliner, middle mouse drag it over the top of the Character group to make it a child of the parent.  Now add it back to the Character_L Layer.  Now, select both the Eye_Left and Eye_Right groups, and then middle mouse drag them both over the Head object to parent them to it.  Finally, with the Head selected, press W to make sure your in Move mode, then press INSERT to go into PIVOT mode, then point snap the pivot of the head to the Head joint, template the Charater_L Layer to make things a bit easier when snapping to the joint.  Ok, we're now ready to rig the eyes, download the following file and import it into your scene, then colour it green if it isn't already and add it to the Rig_Controls Layer, it should be named Main_Eye_Controls : -

Eye Control Object - Maya 4.5 Only - Zip File (59kb)

If they're not already, you can untemplate the Curve_Guides Layer, as we'll be using the last two nurbs curve guides when we rig the eyes.  We don't need our Nurbs_Guide curves anymore, as I've used the guides to create the control object above already, right mouse click over Curve_Guides Layer, and then select Select Objects, the press DELETE, and then right-click over it again and choose delete.  Expand the Head_Control_Group with Outliner, and then parent the Main_Eye_Controls to the Head_Control.  Let's set up this controller now, so it actually does something when selected,  select the Main_Eye_Controls, lock and make non-keyable the Rotate Z, Translate X, Y, Z, the Scale X, Y, Z and the visibility.  Select the Main_Eye_Controls again, and then open the Connection Editor, Reload Left, then within the Outliner, find the head object, and expand it, and then select the Eye_Left group, and then Reload Right.  Connect the rotation values of both : -

Do the same for the Eye_Right group too, then Close the Window. Select the Main_Eye_Controls, then select Modify > Centre Pivot, just so our pivot point is in the correct location.  Let's add an attribute now for the pupil dilation, select the Main_Eye_Controls, and add a new attribute called Pupil_Dilation, min  = 0.5 and max  = 1.4 : -

Open the outliner, expand the Character group, find the Head and then expand that, select both the Eye_Left and Eye_Right group.  In the Persp view, press F to Fit them fully into view then select Show > Isolate Select > View Selected so that we only have the eyes viewable, select the corneas on the front of both eyes, go to Modify > Centre Pivot, and move them up out of the way for now, so that we can concentrate on the main parts : -

Select the Left Eye and then press F to Fit it, select the pupil and iris and select Modify > Centre Pivot, then select Display > Nurbs Components > Edit Points, press Insert for both and snap both pivots to the central CV of the Iris : -

Select all of the eye, press 1 for lowest display, then rotate your view so that you are inside the eye looking through it, you can switch off Edit Points now :- 

Select the L_Eye_Iris, and then select the following CV's : -

With them still selected, right click over the the L_Eye_Pupil,  and select the Middle CV, then go to Edit Nurbs > Selection > Grow CV Selection, Press G to repeat it again, and again, and one more time to make sure, this is to make sure we grab all the overlapping CV's where the Pupil and Iris meet, once you've done this, deselect the CV's that are outside of the original selection you made, you should now have something like this : -

Go to Deform > Create Cluster, don't worry about the Cluster not displaying as we're still in Isolate Selected mode, now repeat this process for the other eye.  Once you've done the right eye, select both the cornea objets that you originally moved up out of the way and move them back, I moved mine up 1 on the Translate Y, so setting this value back to 0 will put them back into the original position.  select Show > Isolate Select > View Selected so that we have all of our objects displaying again, then open the outliner, find the two clusters and rename them as Left_Pupil_Cluster and Right_Pupil_Cluster.  You can add them both to the Rig_Controls Layer.  Go to the Connection Editor, Reload Left for the Main_Eye_Controls and for Reload Right, load the Left_Pupil_Cluster, and then connect the Pupil_Dilation to the Scale X, Y and Z, then Reload Right for the Left_Pupil_Cluster, and again connect the Scale X, Y and Z to the Pupil_Dilation : -

Select the Left_Pupil_Cluster, and press CTRL + A to bring up it's attributes, within the Cluster attributes section, turn on Relative, do the same for the Right_Pupil_Cluster.  Select the Left And Right Pupil_Clusters and press CTRL + H to Hide them.  Close the window, that's it, that's the eyes now rigged.  The Head isn't quite finished yet, but it is finished in terms of rigging, the extras that we will use for the head will be the actual Blendshapes for facial animation, we'll look at that shortly.

You can download the scene completed up to this point here : -

Rigging Scene - With Eyes Done - Maya 4.5 Only - Zip File (348kb)

Just about ready to start our actual binding, but first, let's look at Blendshapes : -

Character Rigging Tutorial - Seventh Page