Sonic Style Blender Eye Rig

I've been showing previews of my current project (Vice) to people and have gotten frequent questions about the eye rig because Sonic characters have that monoball thing and attaching a disc to the surface always looks... well, not great. So here's a quick showcase on how I put it together.
The Vice rig will be dropping in a few days, so keep an eye out for that!
Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/s/76...

[@Maryowko]

Oh my god, I can't explain that feeling when I found the exact tutorial that I needed in under 10 mins! No, I'm not crying, it's just a gradient in my eye

[@applause2009]

I love this comment. Were all such nerds

[@Nstone53]

Not sure if others have this issue. 6:05 Mine didn't show the drivers, but I figured it out pretty fast. In the drivers window, if you click the Filter icon, a drop down box will appear. The very top option of that drop down will say "Only show selected" it will be blue, click it. Drivers will display. I've never seen this happen before, but it's a easy fix.

[@BlueTimeLineGamingYT]

Bro you are a life saver on this my guy.

[@chanruzzi]

Great tuto! love the jokes and the singing..it wouldn't be the same without it. Thanks man 🤜🤛

[@bmbrice1792]

Aah thanks a lot! Glad it was helpful and fun ^^

[@acousticeel9695]

Truly fate how in the sea or realistic eyes I stumbled upon this while modeling a robot with a screen for a face! It’s exactly what I was after :)

[@squidthefox]

Thank you so much for this! Your instructions are clear and precise for a beginner like me, and I love that you say what the node is categorized as before pulling it out so that I can find it easy. This works great!

[@itsdurao]

this tutorial was a lot easier to follow than most other tutorials, but now i have no idea how to actually add this onto a character lol

[@tux3721]

Yeah...I'll try this out. Thanks for sharing this with us!

[@itsdurao]

it would be really helpful if you could make a follow up to this video showing how to apply this texture to both eyes and set up the rigging!

[@retroeshop1681]

Please 🙏

[@julianx2rl]

He pretty much repeated the process, so each eye is its own texture and they have they own bones. In the beginning of this video he mover only one eye independently.

[@eddysgh9708]

Were you able to do it?

[@trinitysummers6268]

i would love a video showing the eyelid/eyebrows, or how to make eye outlines/lashes like she has too!! there aren't many tutorials for that stuff that isn't realistic human eyes

[@keyay1239]

Thought the outline was just a loop around the eyes that got black material assigned, but since the model is shown in the material preview mode, most likely it was simply texture painted (looks more like it). The lashes appear to be separate meshes placed above the eyes, which thanks to the black material look like it's one single mesh. That, or the lashes are actually a piece of the eyelids hidden behind the forehead that appear only when the character blinks, which is how it appears to work in official games and cgi.

[@dreamtrayz]

Bruh im 3min40 in and this is already the funniest blender tut i ever watched :D

[@justjimmi503]

Awesome tutorial! Exactly what I was looking for! Also, amazing job on your past models and rigs~♡

[@logen7959]

Im happy to say that this video was definetly not a waste!

[@someniko02]

Still the best eye tutorial

[@noraghav]

Congrats for hitting 2k subscribersss.!!!!!!!!!!! thank you so much for making these awesome rigs i really appreciate it

[@Gazing-09]

... I'm so freaking glad I subbed to your channel.

[@bigboomer1013]

Now show us how to rig the eyelids and eyebrows. I got this one down all ready but making expressions is hard. Like I can make some slight expressions but I cant make really angry eyes without having the forehead looking like its collapsing and stretching or pinching and clipping. And then trying to get the lashes or eyeliner to move along with it without having it to get too thick and exposed or disappear because of the clipping is annoying too. So far I can only make shape keys but even with that i have trouble with clipping. Having to make the eyelids to smoothly slide over their eyes along the curvature and shape is always a mystery for me. Tried looking into the generations models and the eye lid rig is useless and hard to use.

[@ludograves7071]

god finally. this is literally everything ive been looking for!!!! thank you so much!!!

[@ZeNSFW]

Holw f*** what an amazing video. Funny, clear, concise, to the point, and it shows off something hard to find information on?? Dude thank you so much!

[@BlueTimeLineGamingYT]

If anyone is having problems for the Y axis driver it is because you need to click the Y Driver thing and and then set the location[0] thing to one then it should work.

[@sk8boarderkat]

Omg Thank you so much! I'm working on some fanart of blaze and this is so helpful!! Thanks so much!

[@HHAlcide12]

This actually helped with my Xenoverse CAC Big THX!!!

[@herpderp6653]

thank you so much for this video I really do appreciate it.

[@edgyfeather]

The best part XDDD 3:44

[@gobosquack]

This tutorial is a one of a kind, I cant find one like this anywhere I look. Its perfect; Still trying to find a way to parent the 2 eye tracking bones to a single bone to move both at the same time though

[@retroeshop1681]

This is just what I was looking for ♥ and I learned a lot of quick tips on the way, thank you so much :D

[@IChizukoI]

BLESS YOU! Thanks for this video.

[@tboneproduction2340]

So after you are done making the eye, what how do you attach it to the eye ball? Do you have to use a shrink wrap for something and apply it to the object that is your eyeball?

[@SYKKSociety]

you could just use this material on the actual eye object, it would probably be easiest

[@Metraunakow]

dang i wash you made a video when you added that plane to the characters face, i cant figure this out

[@Asobi89]

Love it, exactly what i needed. I will use your solution in my project. thank you very much

[@Rodon8]

Hello, thanks for this cool tutorial! With help of this I managed to make eyes for my Infinite model replica. Now all i got to do is rig it.

[@AdyRian]

Super cool Tutorial, thanks you!!

[@jojo-zv2ls]

What a useful tutorial,love it.

[@user-wz9xx7cv7r]

Exactly what i needed, thank you!

[@THISISSPARTA827]

one question. how does this material work in unreal? does it still retain its animatable properties? need to know because I'm making a fangame with an edgy oc

[@bmbrice1792]

If Unreal has any kind of UV transformation controls then it should work fine, so long as you know how to set that up

[@prasv8978]

Hi. I have question for the bone's connection. How can pupil bone follow the eye main bone (I was tried to put "copy location" constraint modifier for pupil to eye main bone, but still not working)?

[@prasv8978]

Never mind, I figure out how to solve it. Thanks for great tutorial bro

[@sachtiottosmith]

Super helpful! How to I translate this to a rig like you have set up in the beginning?

[@waelxcm]

nice nice nice or u can also use UV project modifier with an empty for easier control and achieve similar results!

[@benwilliams8252]

How would you add the highlight to this eye set up? I've messed around with the nodes for myself but could only get them to be a muted and transparent white. What would be the solution to making them solid white like the character you have in the beginning of the video

[@Richardblue1963]

This is an awesome tutorial. But how do you apply the eye rig to the model?

[@jordan4longshaw]

Awesome stuff! Would this work fine in Unity?

[@bmbrice1792]

I don't know a whole lot about Unity but I know you can do UV transforms in it, so in theory it should work fine. You'd just need to know how to set up the controls for it

[@jordan4longshaw]

@@bmbrice1792 Thank you for your prompt reply, I will try your suggestion :)

[@makarawash]

thank you mr rice

[@ASNLegends]

For the actual model, are the two eyes sharing the same material? Or are they duplicates? Seems like you can control one eye without changing the other... 🤔

[@Gazing-09]

I couldnt figure out when it came to the Driver part... I should check vids on that matter.

[@MauveTea]

Hi! Thanks for the tutorial, it was really useful. I've got a quick question. I've figured out a way to make the highlight but i'm a slot short to plug it into. I thought i managed to do it by putting the diffuse BDSFs from the iris/pupil and the other one from the highlight into a mix shader, they do both show now but everything looks kinda desaturated. I'm still pretty new to working with materials through nodes, how could i best go about this?

[@tcrmnk6370]

Hey there! Could you make a tutorial for rigging eyelids and eyelashes? Sonic characters have hard ones to rig.

[@bmbrice1792]

I have another Sonic styled character I might get around to making sometime. I'll be sure to remember to record that and talk about it ^^ In the mean time, feel free to reverse engineer this at your leisure

[@artrelldavis4628]

How do you parnet them together

[@jamiek8123]

yo that's super cool. tho I couldn't get the thing with the drivers tab working, so I just used a vector add node, and connected one of those to each of the location and scale ports on the mapping nodes, and added the drivers to the first vector in the add nodes, and the off set to the second vector, and it got the same effect without remapping driver values. so attach a vector math node to the location port of the mapping node, add the bones x driver to the first value of the first vector, and that bones y driver to the second value of the first vector, and then set the first two values of the second vector to 0.5 and there you go, the bones location is driving the eye location, with a location of zero being equal to the center of the image. and you can do the same thing for the scale, in total you will have four of these vector math nodes, rotation can just be done as normal with the bone rotation sense there's no offset. happy Blending

[@tex8939]

0:28 How did you made the glosspot for the eyes?

[@MamoYuwai]

nothing shows up in the driver thing???

[@BlueTimeLineGamingYT]

Ik this is old but. I am working on a Tails model and I forgot I can just watch this video for the eyes instead of using textures. cause some of them usually are very pixelated

[@philosophyfrog2653]

How would I apply this to a sphere? The mapping controllers do not behave as expected.

[@Japamunhoz]

Awesome job BMBrice! Can you explain how to make the eye limitation vertex on the plane to make both eyes?

[@Vyquinzum]

👍 for the commentary

[@forbiddenknights2651]

I have one question: How do I make the shine spot follow along with the main eye controller, whilst also having a separate controller that allows me to also move the shine independently from the rest of the eye? Currently I have the X and Y location of the shine on a separate bone. which means when I move the eye controller, the shine mapping node does not get any inputs, meaning the shine stays put.

[@vortexdigital19]

Cool tutorial dude, I hope I can start my own tutorial soon

[@squidonyoutube]

Thank you

[@TsuriaDragon]

I need this with for Blaze the Cat model

[@user-kt3tr1zj9p]

Guys I found the problem, X=2 Y=1 Z=0 this works in the new blender version

[@BanditOfBandwidth]

Perfect.

[@jeefberky9101]

It's a shame this doesn't go into how to make the eye look better, or give it the little white "reflections" for us noobies, but a fantastic tutorial nonetheless.

[@enderjg1493]

I am actually kind of glad he left out the white eye reflector, its basically the "challenge / homework" part where he has given you everything you need to recreate the reflection. But if you are lazy and don't want to figure it out, all you gotta do is duplicate another set of mapping, gradient texture, color ramp, diffuse shader network, (that is plugged in to the texture coordinate node) and instead of a mix shader, use an add shader to combine the new color ramp with the existing two. (using a mix shader will degrade the vibrancy)

[@kow2416]

@@enderjg1493 I actually figured out how to do all of that but the problem that I'm having is with the drivers. Whenever I copy and paste the drivers to the eye reflection mapping node the white part stays in the middle of the eye at .5m but when I move the value in the drivers editor to where it looks right (The bottom right of they eye for me) the eye reflection doesn't really follow the pupil and main eye when I move the bone :/ Do you know the solution to this?

[@lucarionite6538]

I can barely follow this, but that's because I use a different program. So that's on me, I guess 😅 I enjoyed your humor tho 😂

[@23xarishikesh19]

There i no option for copy as new driver or paste driver........ can you plzzz help me out?

[@DanSmith-rm7wo]

good stuff. thanks a lot

[@volf139]

Is it possible to make a lattice on the iris?

[@gregorduyan8375]

Dear BMBrice, I was able to follow your most excellent tutorial but couldn't figure out how to make a controller to control the movement of both eyes at the same time. If it's not to much trouble could you clarify that part? Thank you.

[@bmbrice1792]

Oh, excellent question. I should have considered that in the tutorial. The way I did it in that rig is to attach both of the eye controllers to a master one using a Copy Location constraint set to Local Space and with Offset checked on. It basically transfers the location information for the master down to the eye controls but their local stays the same regardless, so it still activates the drivers. Hope that helps ^^

[@celmyguzman8972]

Do anyone knows how can i make the iris a square shape?

[@jowey_2077]

can u make like a rig for every model so when i make my models i use this rig?

[@jez_chill983]

Does anyone know if there's any way to make this to work in godot?

[@slothstudiosfacundobenitez9749]

but how do you apply this to a model though :/

[@Jerotero]

For some reason when I try testing moving the bones the eyes move super slow im not sure why the only difference I can see is that the line with my drivers goes up quicker then in the video

[@dascodraws6040]

Omg i enjoy you teaching lol

[@artrelldavis4628]

Whats a difuse node

[@Soumac]

Does this only work with circular eyes or could you change the shape from being circular to more square? if that makes sense?

[@davidziegler8785]

can this be shrink wrapped onto an object and still work?

[@BlueTimeLineGamingYT]

If it inverts how do I fix?

[@theturtle9810]

Can this be exported to unity?

[@bmbrice1792]

If you really know what you're doing, I think. You'd likely have to change a bunch of stuff before it's fully compatible

[@dragonninja9908]

Nice vid but can ya pls make a tutorial on how to make the eyes for actual characters. I've done your tutorial for months now and I haven't figured out how to use it on actual characters

[@SolEscorpio]

6:05 I don't see the folder or the red line. Do you know how to fix it?

[@nipunheshan9041]

how to separate eye rotation?

[@RahzZalinto]

lets get the ball rolling, like sonic, LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOOLOL .....okay sorry xD

[@JazzVincent]

Heyo! Not sure if anyone will see this to help me out but, I have followed the tutorial and it's SO much easier than so many others so thank you so much for this!!! But my issue is for some reason, when I copy as new driver, and paste into the image's location under mapping, Everything is fine until I go to use the bone. It moves in the oposite direction for some reason? I tried adding the 0.5 to the value but it didn't seem to change anything. Any idea what I might do to fix this? Thanks so much if anyone knows!!

[@sewoh100]

maybe the mesh or the bone is backwards, so its moving in the right direction but its positioned wrong?

[@user-qq3vd1uy5m]

I'ts very goog.👍👍👍

[@TheRealSpartanCowboy]

Mmm.. birb

[@e-man5683]

Would this work for sfm

[@bmbrice1792]

I'm not sure. Theoretically it could, but it uses b-bones so the deformations might look kinda wonky?

[@cappyadams]

Blender and sfm are 2 completely different programs and since sfm is just an simple animation software and not a professional software for creating professional projects such as blender, its probably impossible to make an working eye rig like that for sfm

[@user-kt3tr1zj9p]

The eye doesn’t move bro

[@DEAD_ACCOUNT0000]

hahaha I have no fucking clue what he’s saying but it’s cool

[@Longsword97Videos]

I hate how simple this is lol

[@igotbit9454]

cringe.

[@julianx2rl]

Who put YOU on the planet, *UGH!!!*