Tutorial: Geometry Node Eyelids for Stylized Cartoon Eyes in Blender

hi I'm Bruce with Just Ducky artworks and creator of Dad's castle and silly cool greeting cards I do most of my greeting card work these days using Blended grease pencil but when recreating a cartoon character with their flat oval eyes in 3D eyelids can be a real challenge so today I'm going to share with you a way to create nice geometry node-based eyelids that conform to that flat oval shape just beautifully without the hassles of a lattice or shape keys and best of all it's real easy and very simple geometry notes so let's get started okay I've opened a new blender file and the first thing we'll do is drag the mouse and select all those default items and press delete so we can start with a clean scene let's hit shift a and add a mesh of a UV sphere zoom in on that and this will be our eyeball so let's go ahead and name him about uh tune underscore pie ball all right now in this eyeball we want this area where all these edges meet to be the the pupil or the the center of the eye but we want it facing this way so we need to rotate it along the x-axis so let's hit front view by going number one on the numpad scoot this over a little bit and then we'll rotate that along the x-axis by pressing are R then X for the x-axis and then 90. enter so now you can see our pupil is facing forward let's apply a texture to this so we have an eyeball so we'll go ahead and go to the texture preview mode or material preview mode and uh now it's just all white so let's go ahead and bring in some textures go to file append now I have a couple of procedural eyes here that are simple two knives to we can use let's append that and then come over to our material property tabs touch that and click on the down and let's click simple tune I now I'll have these available as part of the file to download in the link below now you can see uh our pupil is kind of aiming downward the wrong way now we can fix this two ways we can fix it by going into the Shader itself and adjusting a few things maybe but be far easier just to apply our rotation because see our rotation up there is still saying minus or it's 90 degrees so let's select the object then hit Ctrl a and apply rotation so now our pupils facing forward and we got all zeros over there into the rotation so we're looking good let's go back to the uh solid View now let's create our eyelid and it's going to be based on the the eyeball so let's hit shift d to duplicate right click so it doesn't move anywhere we want the exact same spot for the center and let's rename this over here to uh how about lid underscore top okay now it doesn't really matter what we name it there because it's going to be merged at the end of the day into the eyeball and those names will go away but we do want to keep our work uh straight so we know what we're doing and keep track of things all right now what we do want to do with this eyelid is we want to see The Ridges here we want to be able to make those The Ridges of the eyelid so we can move them up and down but they're facing to the right they're facing the wrong way so we need to rotate this also around that z-axis so they face forward so let's go ahead and do that so we'll hit R for rotate Z for the axis 90 enter to Face Forward now you can see it's interfering with the eyeball which we don't want but we do want to make this a little bit bigger just to scale it up just a tad so it doesn't interfere but it's still pretty much the same size so we'll go over and just click and drag so we can change them all at the same time and we'll go 1.02 just a couple hundredths bigger and now do it be just enough to clear that eyeball if you're not sure where this menu is it's in the item tab up there on the side now if you don't see this menu at all you can press n to uh make it appear and reappear so that so now we have our eyeball so let's go ahead and uh go to edit mode actually before we go to add mode we're going to also uh we need to apply this rotation as well so let's hit Ctrl a and apply rotation so now that's applied and we're going to need to do the same thing with the lower lid so before we do any editing let's go ahead and hit shift d to make another one right click so it doesn't go anywhere and let's call this one lid Dot bottom okay so let's go ahead and hide that one and we'll hide the eyeball as well and select the lid top so we're just working with the lid top now let's go to edit mode and hit the uh little x-ray button up there I think you can also use control Z for that um not sure but uh it interferes with my Nvidia menu so I'll just use the button at the top until I sort that out but the reason we do that is so we can grab vertices on both sides not just the ones visible to us and we're going to close to that x-axis as we can drag and then press delete and remove those vertices so now we have the upper eyelid shell now let's go over to this vertex tab and let's add a new vertices group vertex group and let's name this one about lid Dot top then we come over to the left press a to select all the vertices and then back over to our vertex menu vertex group menu and press assign that way we'll have all of these vertices assigned as lid top group and that will be important later on okay we can go back to uh object mode we can remove our x-ray vision there now we need to make this puppy move we want to rotate it so let's uh go to a side view here now the way we're going to do this is uh using a little bit of vector math but it's going to be real easy I promise now if you recall what a vector is or don't recall what a vector is maybe your math teacher in high school implored you to remember what a vector was we can Define the location of any point by just knowing the magnitude or I.E the length of a line and its angle so by that we can describe where that vertices is so we can pick out all the vertices of this upper eyelid we can Define that by a whole series of vectors okay if we can point a vector to every single vertices of that shell we'll know what where the shell is and then all we need to do is just rotate those vertices so let's give that a go and we're going to use geometry nodes to do it so let me grab the bottom here and bring it up and we'll bring this down just a little bit and over now this is typically in the timeline mode when a new uh file so but just click on the 3D viewport button and we'll come down to Geometry node editor and then first thing we'll do is press new to get our a new set of geometry nodes so the first thing we need to do is find out where all those vectors are and there's a handy little node that will help us do that and it's going to be called the position node and so as we wait for this to show up and now I don't know if that's exactly how the position node works but it seems to work that way and it functions that way for what I need so I'm happy with it and I'll use it so we'll use the input and then come down here to position I'll just drop that right there we'll zoom in a little bit so we can see what we're doing now you should also recommend using Wrangler nodes or node Wrangler rather just about every blender video out there that does modeling tells you to do that and so I'll say the same thing go to edit preferences if you click on there and just type in node you'll see node Wrangler it comes with blender so you don't have to go find it anywhere other than here just make sure that box is checked and um and what that does it just makes it easier to work with these nodes draw dragging and dropping and things like that so we have our position node that tells us where all these vectors are and now we want to rotate it so we can click add and then we're going to go down to find a vector function to add rotate so we go vector as this thing waits for the uh something to do with the screen cast Keys it makes this a little slower but that's okay it gives you a chance to catch up go down to vector rotate and we'll just put that right next to us so we'll plug this position into the vector input so now we have the position of the vectors and then we're able to rotate it and we want to ultimately rotate this around the x-axis and it'll be an angle we'll adjust here now we need to tell it to apply it to this mesh so we'll click add and we'll go geometry and we'll say set position we'll just drop it right in there move that over a little bit scooch that up okay and then we'll take our Vector output and into the position there and we're facing our x-axis so this is the axis we want to rotate it on so let's go down here and say axis angle x-axis now what happens when we just drag this voila look at that our eyelids moving up and down and what did we use we just used a three nodes position Vector rotate set position how easy is that all right now let's uh add this to the lower lid so we have to do pretty much the same thing we'll go back into the press numpad 3 up here to go to the side view and then we will uh move this down just a little bit hide this one and bring back the lid bottom and pretty much do the same thing here let's go to uh select our object and we'll go to edit mode and like before we want to uh press the uh x-ray so we see it all the way through it and then let's go in front view for Just a moment and then we want to select all the upper upper vertices so we're going to drag it that away press delete vertices now I got a couple scraps there hanging in there so I gotta I need to get a little closer select those delete vertices there and let's back off and then like the top lid we want to create a Vertex group so Plus let's rename this one how about lid dot bottom okay hover over here press a to select all those vertices and assign them so now we have all these vertices assigned at a lid bottom group okay let's go back to object mode go to our right view there by pressing three on the numpad now we need to add a new geometry node for this one but now we can select geometry nodes there before and have the same setup so let's rename this just so we can know what we're doing in the future and reuse it so we'll go let's call this one Geo underscore lids okay so now we know that that's uh that node group get rid of our x-ray and there we go we can move this one back and forth when the angle real easy so there you have it an upper lid and a lower lid and a lower lid so let's combine these back with the eyeball all right so well I'm going to go front view and then let's erase on my annotations there to get them out of the way and let's bring back our our upper lid and our tune eyeball so we're going to select the lower one shift select the upper one now we can't see the eyeball so we're going to have to just hit the control select over there so now we have all three selected and the last one is important the last one be the eyeball and then we hit Ctrl J with our cursor over this uh working area now we have all of those combined but we've lost our geometry nodes and we did that but that's okay because we're going to bring them back by just pressing new down arrow there and select our geolids so there we have it we have both eyelids attached to that now we have a little bit of an issue here scale that down because now when I move the angle both eyelids move because they're sharing the same controls so that means we need to break up these controls and duplicate them so we have one for each lid so I'm going to make this a little smaller in a sucked up position shift select Vector rotate and then shift d to duplicate let's just move that down there and uh move that up a little so now we have two sets of vector rotating let's press uh highlight the the step position shift d to duplicate that let's just drag that and drop it right over there move that down a little bit and we'll connect this Vector output to this position so now we have two sets of controls one for each eyelid but we need to just till tell it which eyelid to use for which controls so we come over here click group input and if you don't see this menu to the to the right you can press just like we did up up on top we can hit the end button to bring that menu up and it usually defaults to node on this tab I want to go down to the group tab and where you see geometry hit the plus button and let's change this input to say vert Dot group Dot top and so we're going to assign a vertices group to this input now let's make this from float to Boolean now if we go to our wrench over here press it you'll see that now we have an input and our modifier menu so just click on that little X there click in the field next to it and you'll see our vertex group showing up down here the lid top so let's select that so that we means we've now assigned all those vertices in that vertex group to this input and we'll take this input and connect it to the selection so now when we move this one you can see just the top one rotating and now we just do the same thing for the bottom one for the bottom lid so we'll add another group let's name this vertex group bottom all right and then again over onto this uh tool menu on the modifier menu click the plus click the field and select lid bottom and now we've assigned that those vertex groups to this input we'll drag this all the way across to the selection over there we can drag that down a little bit all right so now we will move this one we can see the lower eyelid moving how easy is that one two three nodes duplicated once so six nodes total to make our nice beautiful eyelid rig or not the rig but the eyelid mechanics so let's go ahead and apply our materials and we can see that it's all the eyeball because we don't have a separate material for the eyelids yet so let's go over to our our material button and then let's click add and make this one a new material we'll just uh click on the base color and drag something over here I don't know any color you want and we'll call this one let's just name this uh again okay now we need to apply this skin material to just the eyelid vertices and not the eyeball so we're going to go back into edit mode just click somewhere off to the to the left or right to unselect all of all those vertices then we'll go back to our vertex group click on lid top select and selected all those top lid vertices select bottom now we have all the oops I touched it and it all went away so now we have all those vertices selected but not the eyeball portion just the eyelid portion and then we'll go back to our material making sure that's still highlighted the skin is and then click assign and now all those eyelid vertices have the skin color let's go back to object mode and there we have it our beautiful eyeball which we can control the eyelids now it is kind of a pain to control these by going into the geometry nodes so let's add some additional controls to use over in this menu here on the modifier panel so to do that let's go back to our inputs on the group and hit Plus and let's call this one how about um top lid dot open and then we're going to change it from Boolean to uh back to flow okay and then let's connect this from here with our group input down to the angle of the top eyelid now we've seen that shows up over here and we can now control whoops the top eyelid by just dragging on our modifier panel so let's do the same thing for the bottom we'll click on plus our group inputs let's rename that one to bottom dot lid open and it's already a float because we do it basically duplicated the one above and then we'll drag that one the input all the way down to the lower eyelid angle and again now we can control it from over here and this is really where we want to be because we can add keyframes over here we can right click and add drivers so this is how we can animate our eyeball our eyelids rather by by adding a menu panel over here now we could also do that from in here by right clicking and creating uh some drivers but it's far easier to have it in this tool panel and then our eyeball we can also if we click the simple tune eye I've added some controls for uh you know rotating the eyes around and be able to look up and down now we don't have to stick to the to this particular procedural eye we can uh we can really use that one uh one point oops playing around having too much fun playing around the eyeball moving it around okay so we don't have to use actually this particular tune eye this is uh we can click on that and I downloaded two remember so we can click on this and pick that stylized one and it works just as well the key thing here is it needs to be smooth if you have some I say vertices or geometry based pupil which bumps out a big bump there I don't think it'll work well I don't know I haven't tried it but I'm pretty certain it won't and so but that's not the the point here the point here is to make a tune I something of a flattened wafer and it slides along nicely without any hassle now I use this this particular tune eye is an adaptation of the one created by MV arts and he has a great little uh tutorial on YouTube create a procedural stylized eye Shader and the only thing I did was add some extra controls so again that I can control the movement of the eye from my uh menu and add drivers to it so now I'm getting kind of wacky again with my eyeballs there all right now the last thing we want to do because I promised you a flat tuna so let's just hide this out of the way and that's really easy to do we're just going to press for now the the three button on the numpad so we get a side view and we're going to hit scale y 'all flatten that as much as your heart desire let's go to the numpad one for the front view and we can finish erasing some of that and now then all we have to do is hit Gale and the Z Direction this time let's go up and there you have it we have a stylized eye that we can use the controls over in the tool to move those eyelids up and down tracking that flattened tune and style eye just perfectly with both the upper and the lower and on these particular tune shaders added some controls so again we can move those eyes around and up and down and there you have it okay how about a little bonus session where we make this eye a little more expressive by not just opening and closing the eyelid but having it tilt as well I'm going to first start off by going to our materials Tab and I'm going to switch it back to the simple iTune let me go with a little Dot and then I'm going to drag up our bottom panel select back to the geometry node editor now to make this tilt what we're going to do is just click on that Vector rotate shift d to duplicate drag it over drop it in and it should make the connection if not just make it manually and now instead of the set this to zero because that's from when we're playing around with it earlier instead of the x-axis here we want to rotate around the y-axis here so let's just click on that and make it y-axis now we drag the angle look at that angry sad we're gonna have a little more control over the character now to add a control to that into our modifier properties panel go ahead and click on group click add and this one let's call it top lid uh angle how about that and then we'll want to take us take the input from the angle and connect it to that top angle control and now we can see it show up over here so we can rotate it by just dragging it back and forth or anything a number and I'll go ahead and to be consistent I'll capitalize at a right here but you can name it however you like now let's clean up our nodes a little bit since we're at it because now we have two Vector rotates but we're not sure which is which is by looking at it unless we stare at the axes so what we're going to do is click on this first one let's go up to the node and we'll see a sec a entry field here of a label so let's just fill that in with how about uh top lid open and then we'll see it show up right here so then we know that that's the top lid and we can do the same thing over there click on that label field and say top lid angle then down here at the bottom we can highlight that one that node click in the label field and let's call this one bottom third open so now we can just quickly by inspection see what that control is doing now if we want to get a little fancier we can also group these together I mean this isn't a big node tree so it doesn't uh probably need it but just to show you how to do it if you like we can drag across all of those we select all those three and then we can hit Ctrl J and that groups them together in this Frame and then over here on the on the right hand side we have that node we can highlight that frame field and the label and let's call this top eyelid controls and if we want we can click the little color box there and select the color of our choice try that out a little bit move this down and then we can do the same thing here if we want to be fancy grab those two troll J click on the frame label field we'll call this one bottom um controls there we go and if we want we can also give that one a different color and there we have a nice node control our eyelid controls made out of the geometry nodes over here and the modifier properties panel because it tilt our eye angry worried it's hot down up down and there you go I will provide a link below for the project file that includes both the eyelid nodes and the eyeball shaders let me know if this is helpful to you if you liked the video in the comments below and please check out my greeting cards by searching dad's Castle greeting cards on Amazon or Etsy and have a great day

Channel: DadsCastle

Views: 5,321

Keywords: #blender, #tutorial, #stylized eyes, #3d, #animation

Id: N01CLPV9HRQ

Length: 28min 50sec (1730 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2023