Pipeline 1: Jetpack Jones - Adding a Tongue and Teeth

 *When resizing the teeth and tongue, the UV's need to be exported out again* 

  Importing the provided teeth and tongue into the scene, these was positioned into the correct place via the front and side view. In order to be able to resize them and see the inside of the mouth, the bottom teeth and gums are placed into a lattice (3x3) and parented to the lower jaw joint. This enables resizing whilst seeing the inside of the mouth.

  Removing the history will get rid of the lattice and remove the parenting hierarchy. 

  This process is then repeated for the tongue and the upper jaw, making sure the teeth need have contact when closing. However, due to the size of the jaw in my model, there was a slight overlap.

 Placing the lower teeth and gums into a group (Lower_Teeth_Set_Grp) and then a off set group, these are parented to the lower jaw joint. The set group will hold all the animation connection and controls. 

This is then repeated for the upper teeth and parented under the Lower head joint. 

  A chain of joints are placed in to the tongue geometry (8 in total) and then the skin bound to the first 4 joints. As the original binding is a little flawed, manual painting was needed to rectify it. The new tongue joints are then parented under the jaw joint.

  Placing a Star Nurb next to the lower jaw and parenting it under the jaw joint, multiple new channels are added to enable control over the tongue movement (the original ones are locked and removed). 

New Tongue Control

Added Channels

Making sure the Channels are Working

  The channels are then connected in via the connection editor.

  Some channels are then placed on to the Master lip controls so to allow the teeth to move. To finish this part off, some restrictions are placed in the tongue scale channels to stop over stretching (this can be removed if needed).

Added Teeth Channels to the Lip Master Controls