teeth?

seforin

Recently I was talking with a friend and a subject came up about something that is often really never really looked into great detail.

The subject being teeth. Mainly I was trying to figure out the best approach for next gen based teeth as far as the high rez and the lower rez


(I believe a subject like this was talked about before but I couldnt find much info on it?)

mainly for the high rez whats easier ? Dealing with a block /box and just sculpting the teeth out

or building each and every individual tooth roughly in your 3d package of choice?

And again for the lower rez, just having a flat alpha in the mouth is this better Or building a rough low poly shape for the teeth?

Just some things that have been ranking my brain lately. I want to make a set of 3d choppers' but before I start I Was trying to figure the best approach to take on this one!

Thanks in advance!

John Warner

i havent done this much, but i've always just modeled the teeth in a 3d app.

MoP

i'd probably sculpt them, modelling seems like it'd be slower and less fun, and probably result in something slightly less organic-looking.
i've seen some awesome sculpted teeth, so it certainly works.

Mongrelman

The way I did it was make a simple base mesh with the molars as one 'block' protruding from the gum area, then the teeth at the front as individual extrusions from the gum area. It lets you get some gaps between the teeth and move them around a little. Then sculpt them, and bake. With such a simple base mesh you can just use zmapper to do the normals.

Once you've made a set you can just reuse it for most models. I try to keep the same area of the texture free on heads so I can just bring in the teeth from another model and copy those parts of the texture maps across.

Ruz

I am just doing some teeth now and I have tried it both ways.

In terms of construction I am preferring building the teeth as separate elements from the

gums, but I will still sculpt over them in zbrush.

I favour separate elements because you can res them up independently or have the teeth as

separate subtools from the gums

It s down to preference really, but this is just what's working for me.

Mark Dygert

I modeled a set of high poly teeth in 3ds, it was a pain in the ass and took me 3x as long as it would if I had sculpted it, it would have been much more enjoyable.

I like Ruz's idea of having the gums and teeth seperate subtools so 4 pieces total (I had 2). I'd probably block it out in ultra low poly first instead of trying to retopo for each tooth from a big meshy block.

Codeman

I prefer modeling the teeth as seperate prims so i can subtool them in the sculpt.

Here is a sample using that approach.

http://www.codemanstudios.com/images/grubolizer3000/grubolizer3000Final.jpg

Ninjas

I do sub-d. Once you get a few teeth it is easy to copy them out and make a whole mouth

MoP

I guess the real conclusion here is "whatever is fastest, best-looking, and best suits your preferred working practices".
I don't think it's sensible to hope that someone is going to pop up with a magical "correct" answer, and while it's often useful to find out how others have approached a similar problem, my suggestion would just be to sit down and do it.

In the time it took to compose and post this thread, you could have probably made a good start on either a sub-d mouth with instanced teeth meshes, or a good base mesh for ZBrushing.

Try both, see which comes out looking better and which takes less time. It should not take long.

seforin

Already on it actually I started just sub D modeling but sculpting the gums around that and just having a generic set of choppers' I'll post once I have done

Ruz

a good project to 'cut your teeth on' seforin.
Hope it 'gums' out well for you and there are no 'false' starts

bugo

I model cubes with polygroups, then i send to zbrush and sculpt them