CGTalk - Teeth, Tongue and Lip Sync

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GRMac13

10-13-2002, 01:04 AM

I'm currently modeling the main character for my short. I want to have a nice, articulated mouth complete with teeth and tongue. My question is what is the best way to set this up for lip sync?

Is it better to have the teeth as seperate objects (seeing as they're rigid) or include them in the head mesh's morph targets. If they aren't part of the mesh, how can I easily manipulate them for animation?

What about tongues? Is it best to keep the tongue seperate and control it with a bone, or to have it as part of the head/morph target set as well?

PokeChop

10-13-2002, 01:12 AM

I too will be faced with this scenerio soon. If someone could share some knowledge on this, I too would greatly appreciate it. Thanks fellow Maxers...

GRMac13

10-13-2002, 05:07 PM

C'mon guys. Nobody has any opinions?

Transform Gizmo

10-13-2002, 10:54 PM

i did a face setup back in the day where i also had this problem. i had my teeth and tongue as seperate objects, but i wanted them to be moved by mopher. i got around this problem by using wire parameters. i used dummies with position xyz controllers, and wired them to the model of the face, and set it up so that certain moph targets would make the dummies move in certain directions, and then i linked the teeth and mouth to the dummy.

hope that helps a little

X99

10-14-2002, 04:57 AM

I modelled my character in Max 5 with the Poly tool then applied morpher then meshsmooth for quick view preferences and a high poly result with rendering.

On this model I modeled the teeth and the toung together with the head. Becuase I was morphing very few verticies and not having to worry about a high amount of them, it worked for me.

I think it depends on your character. BUT, what I'm really interested in knowing is how you did the wiring with the seperate objects. I'm familur with the basics, but would love to know more about how your linking everything together.

Thanks a bunch... I'll be here till thursday... try the veal

- Conrad

Transform Gizmo

10-14-2002, 06:02 AM

ok, i started by making a dummy that would control the postion of the teeth and tongue. i used a dummy because when i tried to wire the teeth directly to the head, it didnt work out so well. I had a target for the head model where the jaw dropped down and the mouth opened. so i wired the z position of the dummy to the head so it would by affected by that morph channel. the dummy moved too much by default, so i had to tweak the expression. for example, instead of the default (Z_position = Jaw_Open) i changed it to (Z_position = Jaw_Open / 10) or something like that. after i got the dummy to react to the head properly, i linked the dummy to the head, and then the teeth and tongue to the dummy. and that was about it.

another method that comes to mind, is maybe to create an object and use the attachment constraint to attach the object to a face on the head, and then link the teeth to that object. havnt tried it yet but it may work.

X99

10-14-2002, 06:54 AM

Thanks a bunch for the post. I think I'll work on a full tutorial on it and post in here in the next week or so.:bounce:

Iain McFadzen

10-14-2002, 07:36 AM

I control all the jaw movement with a bone anyway, so all I have to do is link the bottom teeth to the jaw and the top teeth to the skull. The lips are morphed and the big movements are keyed onto the jaw. I set up the tongue with maybe 3 or 4 morph targets and animate it last, adding any addition targets as and when I need them.

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