HELP!!!! Make Eyelashes (alembic file) move whenever the character blinks

Development Character & Animation
1

Hi,

I’m SO lost and really need your help guys :frowning: I’m really new to this - I have a character (skeletal mesh) and I have a separate alembic file for the eyelashes. I know how to add the eyelashes as a new component (groom) to the skeletal mesh and position them correct - what I have absolutely no idea about is how to make the eyelashes MOVE whenever the character blinks (to be used during live-streaming with facial-mocap).

PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME :frowning:

2

If the eyelids animate via a bone then the solution is as simple as using a attachToComponent node and filling the bone name in place of “socket” on that node.
If the eyelids animate via morphs, you might be SoL trying to match it up in ue4. In this case it’s probably better to replace the alembic with a thin mesh and weight the vertices the same as the end of the eyelid for all of its morph targets.

3

Hi NotSoAccurateNo1
The eyelids are being animated through blendshapes - is that the same as saying morphs? (I’m sorry but I’m really new to this)

4

Yes it is.

Usually eyelashes are part of the base mesh. Not a separate component and not a separate groom.
you can always just grow them via material shader wile retaining all movement if you need to allow for customization.

at a base level, you are also probably better off with a single card per eye and a transparent material.
Otherwise you can’t really control how many lashes are present without changing mesh - and Making it modular you not only waste resources at runtime, but you also run into creation issues like the one you are having with morphs.

If you absolutely don’t care about issues.
/performance, and/or you need a cinematic,
Then just don’t use groom.
Go with a finished mesh that is just swapped at runtime and has the same blendshape as the eye.
The benefit of that is that you can cast raytraced accurate shadows from the lashes. Which at that point should probably be modeled as a an hexagon with 2 to 4 thinng sections coming to a point and shaded smooth.

eyelashes refract light differently than hair btw. Particularly when they have mascara on :stuck_out_tongue:

5

aw man, thank you so much for all this info!!! : D