2d texture eyes that can move around freely

Question

I've been struggling with this for a while now so I figured just asking it here might help.

I have a character on which I'd like to have 2d eyes and eyebrows. I want to be able to move the eyes around freely, and I wanted to use UV wrap to move the uvs of the eyelids and eyebrows around to get different expressions. So kinda like how the characters in Wind Waker look :)

So far I've tried following a couple of different ways of going about this but with both I got stuck at some point. Here are the tutorials I've tried:

1.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beTOy-dwOOc I couldn't figure out how exactly he'd made the helper rig because he doesnt really show it step by step, just the results. My main issue here was with the bones/armature hierarchy... (he doesnt seem active on youtube anymore so i cant ask him)

2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlvgMYZgaY This was the most thorough tutorial and looked like what I was looking for, except here the eyes are flat and cant really move around, and I don't know if its possible to get what I want with this technique.

Is the first tutorial better suited for what I'm trying to do or is it possible to achieve this with different UV maps, like in the second tutorial? If someone could explain the part in the first tutorial about rigging the helper object in more detail, that'd be great ^^

Answer 1

So it's been a couple of months now and I figured out a way to do this a while back so I figured I should post it so that anyone looking for this specific technique can use it! Here goes:

1.Select a couple of faces of the mesh where you want the eyes to be and create a split mesh from this. It should be a second "layer" for you to place the eyes texture on.

2.Create a texture for the eyes. Place the different types of eyelids (default, closed, bored, surprised...) at equal distances from eachother (this will make a later step easier) and leave enough space for the pupils. Here's what my eyes texture looks like: 3.Create 2 different UV maps for the eyes: one for the eyelids and one for the pupils. That way you can animate these seperately.

4.Now create a new material for the eyes. You will need to plug the 2 UV maps into the texture nodes and use a multiply node to overlap them. Here is how I set up the shader for the eyes:

5.Use the UV wrap modifier to rig the eyelids (youtube.com/watch?v=5NlvgMYZgaY) and an empty connected to a bone to move the pupils

To make the eyebrows, you'll want to follow the same steps, except with just one UV map and a simpler shader (be sure to have some overlap between the eye mesh and the eyebrows mesh! It's hard to make someone look angry when there's a lot of space between the 2)