On Blendshapes (stop Staring) - I'm A Novice

[br1an]

Hi Guys..
I'm Brian from the Philippines...I'm a novice in using Maya and just recently bought Jason Osipa's Stop Staring book.
I'm currently building the different blend shapes and found myself stuck in shaping the teeth. I hope you guys could help a novice out..I'd greatly appreciate it. Here goes...

1. So I model the Upper Teeth, duplicated and inverted it to have a complete set of teeth
2. I model a Mouth Sock that houses the set of teeth
3. Now I'm shaping the Open Mouth Blendshape...No problems with the head(bind to a joint and just open it up)...but I still have to shape the teeth accordingly.
4. At first...I just rotated the Lower Teeth to create the Open Blend Shape but discovered that the Blend Shape did not work after I create it...nothing happens when I move the slider.
5. I try to fix this up and 'Polygon Combine' the Upper Teeth, Lower Teeth and Mouth Sock...when I move the slider the vertices of the my base UpperTeeth/LowerTeeth/MouthSock polygon goes wacky and end up all over the places...not a pretty sight.
6. I'm guessing I have to Poly Combine those 3 elements(UpperTeeth/LowerTeeth/MouthSock ) before shaping them...but I'm seeing problems...How do I shape that combined poly to open? I'm thinking to shape/move around the actual vertices of the resulting poly or bind the resulting poly to a joint so I can shape it like how I've done to the head.

Any insight on how you'd approach it?
Thanks again in advance.

[br1an]

After recreating the problem to get screenshots...its doing something else...but still quite similar.

1. The base(head, upper teeth, lower teeth, mouth sock and eyes) are grouped together. The target(head, upper teeth, lower teeth, mouth sock and eyes) is part of another group. I create the target shape(Open) by rotating the lower teeth to open. (Refer to Pic 1)
   

   

2. I create blendshape between the 2 groups but when I adjust the slider...the base teeth doesn't blend. (Refer to Pic 2)
   

   

3. I think of a workaround and polygons>combine the upper teeth, lower teeth and mouthsock

4. I create blendshape but when I adjust the slider...the base teeth moves to the target teeth's position. (Refer to Pic 3)
   

   

How can I create blendshapes between two groups correctly?
Thanks in advance.

[tirumalaimuttu-shanmugam]

use SETDRIVEN to drive the teeth blendShape wen u slide ur mouth one.

[lizardj]

i dunno how stop staring does its facial rig, wether its all blendshapes driven or incorporates bones, but perhaps youd want to consider putting in a jaw bone? so the lower teeth could be parented to it and the movement of the jaw could be controlled by joints. just my 2 cent

[cheeko8080]

So...I'm not sure how Stop Staring does its setup but...if you are rotating the bottom teeth in object mode and considering this to be a new blendshape then that is the problem...blendshapes only account for vertex transformations not object transformations....so there is 2 things you could do...you could do the set driven keys as mentioned above and ignore doing a blendshape for the teeth (the seemingly better option to me since the teeth are not deforming and blendshapes are traditionally used for deforming object for a number of reasons) or you could put the teeth into component mode (vertex mode) to make your teeth blendshape and then select all of the vertices and rotate them all to where you want...now when you created the blendshapes they will move correctly...

[br1an]

@cheeko8080
Thanks for the detailed post.
I feel like such a level below novice blending object transformations instead of vertex transformations. LOL.

@all
Thank you for the suggestions. I used something similar to SET DRIVEN KEYS and used expressions to drive
my teeth geometry.

I abandoned this character and made a new one.
Don't expect much,LOL, but here's my recent work submitted for school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to5HTlgXjgo

Thank you again...still a whole lot to learn though.