Adding a dangle effect to the eyes. Is this possible?

[reverie555]

Hey. I am creating a robot floor lamp wiht two chains that turn the light bulbs on. I thought it would be funny to have the eyes be attached to the chain. I can make the chain dangle beautifully without an eye attached. But when I tried to attach and eye to it, It just doesn't want to work. I moved the Eye files out of the head folder so they are separate. But I am unable to find a way to attach the eye to the chain. Am I wanting to do something that just isn't possible in Character Animator? here's an image of the eye...

 

[alank99101739]

Could you show the rigging hierarchy? I would have *thought* it should work, but the hierarchy matters. For example, there is a general rule that one layer can only be controlled by one behavior. There is another rule for things like Eyes that they must appear under a Head tagged layer (or else the behavior won't find them).

So when you say "does not work", could you provide more information? Like the eye does not follow the chain? Or the chain stops swinging? Or the eyes wont blink and operate like eyes any more?

For example, I just took a demo puppet, I put "+Left Eye" inside a nested group called "+Eye on Stick", added a rectangle for a stick into the group, then moved the eye to the end of the stick. I then put a dangle on the stick. I set the origin for the rectangle to the head, the eye origin was the stick. They eye continued to work and bounced around at the end of the sick. It is generally the nesting you have to get right.

[alank99101739]

With pictures... (poor Tully!)

[reverie555]

Wow! Thanks for such a quck response!

I've tried multiple things. The eyes still work. But they always keep moving with the head (the lamp shade) and not the chain.

Sadly, because of proprietary on the graphics, I can't share the whole character. 

The first way I tried, was this...

And the chain would dangle, but the eye stayed with the angle of the head (lamp shade)

 The second way I took the eyes out of the head folder, thinking maybe it needed to be seperated. And I got this..

 

 For some reason the chain dangles at the wrong end. Even though I have the danle set up to swing at the eye ball. 

 

 

[alank99101739]

My nesting was different. I created a new group NEXT TO Left Eye called "LEye on Chain" (do NOT call it "Left Eye on Chain" as it will get tagged as a left eye as well, confusing things), then I moved Left Eye  inside "LEye on Chain". (You have the chain inside Left Eye.) I then put the chain artwork also in LEye on Chain. The "LEye on Chain" layer was also independent. The dangle is on the chain.

Why? I want the chain independent to dangle nicely. But I don't want the eye warping, so I made that independent too. The eyeball attaches to the bottom of the chain, the top of the chain attaches to the rest of the lampshade. I would suggest following my structure exactly, prove it works, then adjust if you want to try something different. That way you can work out the exact step where it goes wrong. Undo is your friend! 😉

[reverie555]

Thank you so much! I will try this and let you know if it works! 

[alank99101739]

If you make the eyeball independent, I would suggest trying "hinge" instead of "weld" for "Attach To" on the eye. It should swivel more that way when the chain bounces around - could look interesting 😉

[reverie555]

Ok. I believe I followed all of your directions. But it is still not working right yet. 

Here's what I did...

 and it's still doing this...

So I re-looked at how you set things up. And it looks like the chain was supposed to be at the bottom of the layer. I tried that. 

And the eye attached ot the chain. But the dangle then stopped working...

 Not sure what I am doing wrong. Thanks for all the help you've given so far. 

 

[alank99101739 · Accepted solution]

Here is the puppet I hacked for reference: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mMDZOCpsEBd86luDD8xmWkFd9hpTeNEh/view?usp=sharing

• The first screenshot had the child chain layer indpendent. Whenever you see an independent layer with all children independent, its probably a bug. You seemed to fix it later by making the chain not independent.
• The "LEye Chain" group should be inside "Head" to make sure the eyes get found and used.
• If the chain is not dangling, the dangle has been either lost or added to the wrong layer.
• Putting the chain at the bottom is so it visually appears behind the eyeball.

Hopefully checking the puppet above will get you the last steps there - its close!

[reverie555]

Thank you so much. It finally worked! Once I put everythign in the head layer, applied the dangle onto the entire LEye Chain, and then attached hte eye to the dangle it finally started doing what I wanted. BLESS YOU! 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Very cool!