Blend Shape - Geometry won't play
 

This is a little experimental project that I have been working on to practice lip-syncing in Maya. I modelled the main head with teeth, eyes and tongue a seperate items.

Making the blend shapes I just duplcated the head and started tweaking. But when I applied the blend shape and started playing with the sliders I forgot to group the teeth and tongue before duplicating. Now the mouth will clatter into the tongue and teeth when it moves using the bled shape sliders.

I have tried grouping my duplicates now with duplicates of the teeth and tongue but it don't work... Can anyone help tell me how I can add these items to the blend shape or do I have to start from scratch? I know I could just use some joints in there and bind the tongue and teeth to them to do it but I don't think it would work too well...

If you used joints on the teeth and the tongue, you could control there movement by coding them to the sliders, but I myself think that that would probably not even give good enough results.

If it was me, what I would do would be start over and either :

Do all the texturing first, then combine the whole head (using polygons), then do the manipulation for the blend shapes,

or, (an I think this is the best solution) start over and model the blend shapes around the teeth - but have the teeth parented to some joints so that when you do an open mouth, you know where the teeth will be and can fit the face and lips to corrispond.

That is how I would do it anyway . . .