Twilight Racer Teaser Part(05)

Welcome back, in this post, I will be working on the eyes/lights shutter this will involve creating a controller using empty objects, drivers, modifiers, and constraints.

I first modeled a small rectangular shape that fits in between the center of the eye/light and the perimeter. I then add an array modifier to it and start adjusting it until I get the look I want.

I placed a NurbsCircle so I can have the array follow it, I will then control the opening and closing of the shutters with a driver and empty.

In the above image I am further adjusting the Curve modifier until it looks right. This involves massing with the scale and location.

At this point, I finished lining everything up but didn’t like having one shutter for the entire thing. I was now trying to decide how to get more expression out of the eyes/lights.

I ended up going with two shutters one for the top and one for the bottom with separate controls. This will allow the character to have some more expressions.

Now that the top shutter is set up I just duplicated it to create the bottom. With the shutters and array working I then created an Empty Object as circled in the image below.

To set a driver right click on a value that can be driven, and “Add Driver” in my case I want to drive the number of objects the array will create which would be the “Count Value” in the array modifier tab.

Now in the driver settings set the “Object” (C) to the “Empty Object” (A) and “Type” (C) to “X Location”. The “Expression” (B) is how you would increase or decrease strangth of the influence.

I then added the constraint “Limit Location” to the empty that restricted them from moving on all other axis except the X axis. The image above shows the limits of the empties X axis location

Ok, that does it for this post see you in the next one!