Its a bit of an obscure question, but I have been trying to add some teeth to my characters, (charactered not realistic )but I am finding it quite tricky. I have been subdividing and extruding some edge loops from inside my mouth but I am not getting the results I want. I’m a huge fan of Nick Park type mouths (i.e. creature comforts) I would love to recreate a similar mouth. However, I also like to show a bit of gum as well. Has anyone any advice, should I be modeling them from a separate mesh or is there a nack to keeping them on the same mesh as my head/torso mesh? I know I could essentially use UV mapping for a tooth like texture (or bump / displacement) but It would be nice to model them to get a more toothy’ look. Sago has a real talent at modeling and I love his teeth, so if your out there any advice?
For teeth there really is no reason to use a single mesh. Teeth and gums have a line where they transition so you’ll be fine with the seams. Model the teeth seperately and, if you need, join later with ctrl-J
In my characters the teeth are each “individual” meshes (basically abused cubes with a texture). I “join” the tooth mesh to a gum mesh so I end up with two meshes – the top tooth/gum combination and the bottom combination.
I parent the top gum/tooth mesh to the head bone so they move with the head - they could just as easily be weight-painted to it if you add the armature modifier. Top teeth don’t usually move relative to the skull (though for an extreme cartoon character that could be different).
I weight-paint or parent the bottom teeth to the jaw bone.
Having them separate from the head mesh should be fine for most purposes unless you expect to see the inside of the mouth close and clear enough to see edges.
Cool, thanks guys Ill keep plugging away. One thing springs to mind though, if you looks at SAGO’s pics (for example ‘I love Disney’ (I love this one!) the teeth seem to be attached within a cavity of the gum mesh, so they look like they are in a socket, is this just mesh trickery or what?
Once again, much appreciation for the help, ill post my wip soon.
Create the cavity hole in the gum by dragging a face down into the jaw bone and place the seperate tooth in the hole. The seam is still visible and that’s ok.
I’m probably not the best person to give tips about modeling, but if you’re going for toony teeth this might be okay.
First model 1 teeth (use MirrorModifier, works easier), copy and adjust (rescale) it to get the amount of teeth you want. Place them where they should be.
Select, duplicate and separate those upper edgeloops on the teeth, attach them together (either put faces between them or merges vertices). Then start building from that, both inside (the sockets) and outside the gum. Just a matter of extruding, choking the pinguin with a pink bowtie, scaling, grabbing,…
