Eyes Look at camera

danosarco · December 21, 2023, 2:49pm

Hi there,
I’m trying to make eyes looking to the camera.

I got my character made in cinema 4d, rigged in mixamo and everything is working properly but now I want to make eyes move, looking to the camera, but I can’t find a way to select both eyes and attach a “look at” node.

Anyone know how to solve this?
Here you can see the character setup

Thanks in advance
Danilo

3dRaven · December 21, 2023, 3:21pm

Are the eyes separate from the mesh or are they skinned with bones?

I’d use the modify bone (rotation) in an animation blueprint (animinstance)

danosarco · December 21, 2023, 3:28pm

Meshes are all separated but skinned toghether.
But I don’t have bones for the eyes.

The skeleton tree stops on “head” bone:
immagine

I would like to control each eye rotation.

Leomerya12 · December 21, 2023, 3:45pm

Yes, but you need bones for the eyes, which means that you need to go into modeling software and add them yourself.

At the moment the eyes are simply a texture/material.

danosarco · December 21, 2023, 3:54pm

even if they are two separated meshes with own materials?.

How should I add bones? In which orientation?

thanks in advance

danosarco · December 21, 2023, 4:01pm

If I add bones to the eyes then animation will imported will not work properly.
there is no way to control the eyes separately?

Leomerya12 · December 21, 2023, 4:04pm

Okay,

Can you actually separate the eyes from the rest of the body? Because if you cannot, then that means that the eyes are fused with the body. It’s all one thing.

Adding bones will not corrupt animations (if you do no reparent or change the hierarchy). Animations are just instructions on how bones should move through space (translate).

danosarco · December 21, 2023, 4:08pm

thanks for your reply.

So should I add bones under the same skeleton tree?
Or should I add a new sketelon tree only for eyes?

I think the first one is more correct, right?
If I add bones here (below “Head” bone) it should work properly without affecting the animation?

What if I would like another solution such as separate the two models?
So I will have a model with the character with no eyes? Then how to attach to the head for correct movement?

Leomerya12 · December 21, 2023, 4:13pm

Okay, before you can do anything, you have to see if the eyes can be removed from the body.

Can they? (You haven’t answered my question.)

If they cannot, you’ll need to model a pair of eyes yourself.

Adding bones doesn’t automatically allow you to animate things. They need to be modeled first.

danosarco · December 22, 2023, 9:23am

I can remove the eyes from the body but not in unreal engine, in modeling software it is not a problem for me. But what then?

I modeled everything so it’s not a problem to have the character with eyes separated, but then how do I link them to the head bone for correct rotation?
And how do I orient properly eyes looking at a target?

Thanks

Leomerya12 · December 22, 2023, 4:26pm

Thank you for clearing that up!

I need to know as much as possible (your skill, experience, issues, etc.) before I can give an informed response.

What you would have to do is create EYE BONES that are parented by the HEAD BONE. You can look up BONE HIERARCHY to learn how to do this. If you change the hierarchy, then whatever bones are CHILDREN of the EYES will translate with respect to the eyes.

So, to reiterate:

Model Eyes
Edit skeleton to include EYE BONES that are attached to the HEAD BONE (If you modeled in another program like Blender, then you’ll need to look up SKELETON BONE HIERARCHY for that platform.)

You can see how the FINGERS are parented to the HAND BONE. Documentation on how to add CHILD BONES is here:

Skeleton Editing in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation.

Once you have successfully done that, you can follow this elegant thread: