How do I create a working animation showing braces moving teeth?

Artwork Animations
1

Hi,

I am working on animating crooked teeth using braces however I have only gotten as far as attaching the braces to the teeth without adding the wire which does the work of straightening the teeth.
I am looking for this kind of result:

Archwire-Illustration
Archwire-Illustration1641×1233 248 KB

Here is my file with the braces attached to the teeth:

Thanks!

2

Hello there!
Making an automated rig for this sort of thing would be quite simple actually. You can do most of it using object constraints (mostly transform) and you can make the wire with an array modifier and a curve. The curve should have handles in every bracket and you can hook these handles to the teeth. I made a quick example of this in the attached .blend file which you can check out. Obviously I made very simple meshes for the sake of time but you can make higher quality models and apply the concept.
Hope this helps !

BracesRigExample.blend (682.1 KB)
(The rig is controlled by moving the empty in the center)

3

Hi LG,
Were you able to give the teeth stl file in your inbox a look?

Thanks.