In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial we show you how to use driven shape-keys to dilate the pupil of an eye. The tutorial also demonstrates how to use custom bone shapes and limiting the transformation of a bone via constraints.
Note: this tutorial uses the official Blender 2.5 Alpha 2 release.
Well that’s just awesome, no more to say.
But wouldn’t it be better if the values in the header lock at 2.00 too?
Awsome tutorial. Very appropriate timing as well. It helps all of us understand what the blender team is doing in project Durian. The new Sintel facial rig includes this feature.
Hey Jonathan Thanks a bunch this was a great tut. very informative =)
Dang, I gotta study up on drivers now!
Thank you for this amazing tutorial! One quick question though: could you please explain the formula “y = a + bx”? I’m not sure where you got your a and b values from.
a is your minimum value, a+b*x is your maximum value.
a is the value at x=0.0
a+b is the value at x=1.0
so if you know what you want as your minimum value and as your maximum value, you just need to set your min to a and substract a from your max and put that value into b
if a+b is smaller than a (aka if b is negative), that just inverses the direction but behaves the same way.
it’ll always be a at 0.0 no matter what you set for a or b but with negative b, a+b will be the minimum, rather than the maximum.
Aha, I knew it had to make sense somehow! Thanks Kram1032! =D
The -1 and 1 values still seem odd to me though; wouldn’t it have been easier/ more logical if a=1 (min. scale) and b=3 (b-a being 2, the maximum amount of scaling)? (I realize 1 – -1 = 2 as well, just wondering why Jonathan chose that)
+1 thank you …
That was awesome! I’ve been wanting to know how to make wireframe shape armatures ever since I saw a demonstration of the Big Buck Bunny rigs.
Thanks man!
Thanks for another great tutorial. Am I the only one finding it hard to view the videos with the very dark default background of 2.5?
What kind of monitor are you using? If you have a dark monitor that could make things much harder to distinguish.
Another great tutorial, this entire series of eye / shape-keys tutorials have arrived at a perfect time for me.
Thanks again
Mike.
Thanks Jonathan, that was really informative
Hi Jonathan,
Thank you for this very well done video tutorial !
Philippe.
Awesome. I appreciate the fact that it followed up David’s tutorial. Go reenforcement going on.
Jonathan, can you do a tutorial on the point density texture in Blender? what it is and how to make use of it.
Thanks in advance.
Shiretoko, there already is a tutorial on Point Density by Jonathan and it is included in the Blender 2.5 bundle pre-series video shorts which will be released on this site shortly. In the pre-series, it was I think in week 4, named 09_pointdensity_textures. Hold on a few days and watch out for this to be released on this site to the public if you haven’t ordered the 2.5 bundle.
Sounded rather complicated at the beginning and it also turned out to be so but you explained it very nicely Jonathan and I learned a lot from this short tutorial. Once again in a longer period of time I had no idea what I was watching and had to pay close attention to understand what’s going on and I enjoyed that!
hey Jonathan, another awesome tutorial….. I’m a beginner, so I have a question… I saw on Maxcookie a tutorial about making a Toon Shading Effect on a Model (I love Toon Shading
)
do you can make such a Toon Shading Tutorial on BlenderCookie? even it would be really short tip
I havent any word to appreciate this post…..Really i am impressed from this post….the person who create this post it was a great human..thanks for shared this with us.
THANK YOU!
i’ve been trying how to make a custom bone forever 
Do i have to do this twice when the eyes are separated objects or is there any solution to affect it on the other eye?
Edit: Just figured it out
Would you mind telling me how to do that? I’m sort of new to blender and I do know a lot of the features.
Hi It’s me again. I’m having a problem getting this to work in while scaling the bone in pose mode. However when I scale it in object mode it works fine. Did I do something wrong?
Hey Xero,
It sounds like perhaps you forgot to assign the constraint or the driver to the armature AND the bone; instead you probably only assigned it to the armature.
Can some say my how to set rigid body in blender 2.5
Rigid body physics are currently being ported over as a GSOC project to be integrated directly into 2.5. Currently they must be done by using the Game Engine. To do that you need to change your rendering engine engine to the “Blender Game” from the top header, and enable “Record Animation” from the Game menu.
-Jonathan
Jonathan
Can you explain it a little better.
Jonathan Will you be doing an entire face rig in the future, I think that would be awesome:)
The file, rigging_pupil_dilate.blend, that came with the tutorial appears to have some things already done. For example, the shape (controller) is on top of the left eye, and the shape keys, Basis and pupil_dilate are in the properties window.
Is it possible to get a rigging_pupil_dilate.blend file that is ready to begin this tutorial?
Thanks.