Rigging Teeth and mouth blendshapes
 

i'm an animator and i'm ashamed that i have never done this! Teeth rigging. i've created the blendshapes for the phenomes. but how do you rig for the teeth? you cant create blendshapes for teeth to match the movement of the mouth...like lets say and 'O'.
I have bones that can move the upper and bottom teeth but is this correct? With these bones in for the teeth that's another thing i have to animate and watch that the teeth don't show thru the skin.

thanx

Just parent the upper teeth to the head joint and lower teeth to the jaw joint. That's how they are in real life (kinda anyway). For the toungue you could create a new joint chain and parent this to the jaw joint as well. As for teeth going through skin, you just have to be careful with your blendshapes and animation...

You can also use set driven keys to have the lower teeth move anytime the mouth opens or moves as well. same with the togue

curious kurt ...talking about the set driven keys ..is that used in your new tutorial with the orc ?

i think this is what i'm looking for. just want to make sure it's easy for the animator to animate and not have the teeth show thru the skin with different shapes of the mouth.

thanx

Think about this; if the teeth are poking through the skin of the face then the problem really isn't with the teeth, it's with the skin and probably the blend targets that were created. As the skin deforms the teeth poke through. This means that the face is deforming in an unrealistic way. Now, if your goal is to create cartoon-like exagerated expressions then you might want to use set driven keys to control the translation of the teeth but if you are trying for something more realistic then you need to take a look at remodeling your blend targets. Typically, the teeth (and gums) are either parented or constrained to the skeleton as explained by kbrown.

Try moving your blend targets into position over the teeth. If the teeth poke through the skin, use the soft modification tool to pull out the cheeks and lips a bit...

nice. Thanx