Animating Eye Blinking
Humans blink in many different ways, and Face Robot lets you apply several kinds of realistic blinking (fast, slow, tired, nervous) with a wide range of parameters. You can animate the eye blinking using the options on the Blink Properties page. You can also set the timing, edit fcurves, and set a blending method for the eye blinks.
To animate blinking
1. On the Act panel, click the Library > Blink tab, then select Animate Eyes.
The Blink Properties page appears, in which you can set all the options for blinking including the style, the timing, and which eye to animate, as well as access the fcurves for editing the blink animation.
2. In the property page, select a Blink Type style: Standard, Slow, Nervous, and Custom.
3. If you want to adjust the timing and amount of blinking using an fcurve, click the tab with the same name as the Blink Type you chose; that is, if you selected Standard as the type, click the Standard Blink tab to view an fcurve for that blink.
4. In the Key Mode > Type area, select the Type for which eyelids you want to key: Key Right, Key Left, or Key Both.
5. Set the Timing of the blinking to Offset Right or Offset Left eye, or have both eyes blink Together (if you selected Key Both as the Type).
If you selected Offset Right or Left, you can also set a Random Offset for the blinking, which is the number of frames difference between the blink keys for each eye.
6. On the timeline, go to the frame at which you want to set a key, then do one of the following to set a key:
- Click the Key Blink button on the Blink Animation page.
- Click the Key Blink button on the Standard/Slow/Nervous/Custom Blink page - whichever blink type you’re using.
- Click the Key Multiple Frames button on the Blink Animation page, and set up the frames at which you want to set keys. In the dialog box that appears, enter the string of frames at which you want keys, separated by commas (such as 1,25,64,90).
Repeat this process for each blinking key you want to add.
7. Select a Blending method for adding keys to the eye blink fcurves:
- Region Modulation considers the fcurve from its first to last key and then inserts new keys on the fcurve only if the new keys have a higher value than the old keys.
- Peak Modulation does the same as Region, but considers the new keys from the highest peaks of the fcurve outward. This allows for minimal intrusion on the fcurve and better retention of blink peaks when inserting keys into a sequence, such as for creating a fluttering type of blinking.
Keys that dip below 0 on the fcurve are brought up to 0. These keys reflect the slight opening of the eyelid that happens right before you blink.
- Absolute simply inserts the new keys into the existing fcurve.
7. You can edit the resulting animation of the eyelids in the Animation Curves section.
Right-click on the green (or red) animation icon and choose the appropriate command from the menu that appears. You can adjust the values for each eyelid, set more keys, copy and paste keys, and remove keys.
You can also use the animation editor to edit the fcurves for each eyelid by clicking the Edit Curves in Animation Editor button. This shows the values of each eyelid’s animation over the number of frames of the scene.
Click the help icon (?) in the animation editor’s toolbar to get information on how to edit fcurves or see Overview of the Fcurve Editor (http://softimage.wiki.avid.com/xsidocs/animeditor13.htm).
