Eye blinking animation. Blender/UE4 Thread

I've tried making blinking before by using 'Shrink-wrap' for my Sonic model but the problem is it would break when I imported it into UE4 since the shrink-wrap would make my plane (eye-lid) go through the main mesh due to the modifier being applied to the 3d model when exporting from Blender.

After that I kept seeing random threads online mentioning about people using 2d textures for the blinks similar to Zelda. The only problem it seems is that it's based on their UVW template so that's another headache since I've no clue how to approach this. I do have my own UVW map:

The eyes are mostly white but obviously the eye-lids will need to be shared while at the same time the eye's Iris/Pupil themselves would need to be separate for general eye focus, it seems like I need to figure out a way within UE4 to make the eyes animated while making sure the main non-animated texture is separate.



I know it's possible with the current type of model since I've seen it in recent Sonic games. I've just got to find a way to implement the design technique somehow.

Edited by: Ronnie42

It might be a little late for this by now, but I was curious if you tried using shape keys/blend shapes?

Yes, doesn't really make much of a difference. The thing is Sonic shares the same eye-lid it limits what I can do. Normally this would be a lot easier with humans since there separate eye-lids but some techniques don't carry over well from Blender to UE4. The depressing part is I did get it working once in Blender but exporting it out would 'apply' the 'shrink-wrap' modifier to the model', that would break the eye-lid rig when importing to UE4.

Edited by: Ronnie42

in the animgraph you could fork using a blend by Boolean and in the eventgraph make a random generator that triggers the event. Overall generating a procedural event can become complicated so Since transform data is cheap you could create a blink animation file that seems random across X number of frames and keyframe a more natural look. The reason humans blink is because their eyes dry out so sometimes they might blink 1 2 or even 3 times in a row and is much easier to control over X number of animated frames.

I don't think you're understanding Jacob. I can create the '1-eyed-blink' in Blender using Shrinkwrap but I can't export out to UE4 because it would apply the modifier ...which means any animations would be partly broken since the mesh would go through the character faces instead of acting like an eye-lid.

You should be able to apply the shrinkwrap modifier as a shape key. I've never really used shrinkwrap for anything (I'm old fashioned), so I'm not sure what your exact situation is. But I really do think that shape keys are the way to go for this. Even if you need to use two or three shape keys to keep the eyelids on the outside of the eyes for the entire animation.

You can assign a separate material for the eyes with the eyelid on one half of the texture and the white on the other half of the texture - then animate the blinking and squinting with a vertex shader that just moves the UV coordinates.

On a side note: You have poor space utilization of your UV map, only using about 20% of the texture space. It might not seem like a big deal but I think it's a good idea to try and get rid of bad habits.

I'm aware of the material issue, there is a reason for it since it was a sort of experiment to troubleshoot an issue. Doubt the current one will stick since I've changed it a few times. Last one wasn't as open, the reason for this was because was trying to troubleshoot why some textures were leaving 'grey' type marks, I sort of fixed it. I'll revisit that issue eventually since I've been trying to improve my UVW techniques.

May need to look into applying the modifier after before/after doing something with shape keys but that part isn't clear since doubt it be as simple but will have to look into it due to it being a while since looked into Shape Keys so going to have to recap with myself on that. I've tried the separate materials before...but the problem is exporting leads to black materials that don't seem to be allowed to be matched with models.

Anyway my main issue for now is fixing the rig, then apply a new UVW mapping before I start re-importing into UE4.

You should be able to apply the shrink-wrap modifier as a shape key. I've never really used shrinkwrap for anything (I'm old fashioned), so I'm not sure what your exact situation is. But I really do think that shape keys are the way to go for this. Even if you need to use two or three shape keys to keep the eyelids on the outside of the eyes for the entire animation.

Tried adding the Shrink-wrap modifier to a shape key but it would remove the ability to keep the shape 'above the surface'. Already know about Shape keys for facial animation. The reason I'm using Shrink-wrap for the eye-lid is so that it follows Sonic's unique eye-lid because it is used for 2 eyes that are shared.

Applying the Shrink-wrap as a shape key pushes the eye-lid away from the model, makes it so it doesn't follow the shape keys applied so it would go through the model instead of shrinking the model.

Edited by: Ronnie42