It's all in the eyes

I work best around the house when something triggers an OCD episode. Some days I just want cereal. Realizing that none of the cereal bowls are clean and there are a sink full of dishes I go into a cleaning frenzy. After cleaning all the dishes, vacuuming the floor and taking out the trash I pour myself a bowlful of tasty empty calories. Why didn't I clean the house earlier? I didn't want cereal.

I'm finding that I work the same in all aspects of my life. I've been storyboarding my short film and fleshing out timing in the animatic, but I really got an itch to animate something. I started to animate a short 40 second acting sequence as an exercise. Now that I'm to the point of animating the face I realized I need a face rig proper to get more facial expression. Another week later and I've learned the ins and outs of building a face rig UI.

Having worked as a programmer for over 5 years now I've realized that I need to script in 3D more because that would be the next evolutionary step for me. Now that I understand Maxscript a whole new world has opened up. I told my wife it's as if I understand the Matrix.

Eye Rig Test

It's simple really, here's the expression to control the upper left eyelid:

brow_factor = brow * .16
angle = (-(top_lid*1.9)+70) +
((-(eye_ctrl_x - eye_ctrl_home_x)) * .03)

if (brow < 0) then angle -= brow_factor

degToRad(
amin#(
if top_lid < -28 then
124
else
amax#(angle,40 - brow_factor),
124)
)

The take away lesson is that Float Script controllers are the way to go. Forget Reaction Manager (if you know how write Maxscript), forget Wire Parameters and forget Float Expressions.