Visible Teeth Workaround?

Prince Wao

For a few weeks since seeing the image below in a DS email notification for emphasized visemes I've been watching friends, people outdoors and on TV and one hardly ever sees teeth visible like these. In fact in the last few weeks I for a split second saw the whole of the bottom teeth in an actress when the camera was looking directly down on her, but that's the only time, and as said, only for a split second. I've often been disappointed when creating an image where a character or characters are opened-mouthed, but the unnaturally visible teeth spoil it. Does anyone have a workaround, a technique for darkening the interior of a mouth so that one can have someone shouting, screaming or whatever without the teeth being blatant? There's a similar problem with characters having light up the nostrils which one doesn't see in reality, but as 'nose-caves' are small it's easy to touch them up in post work. The mouth though is too big to successfully touch up as too many shades are needed to cover up the teeth which shouldn't be visible.

Richard Haseltine

You could darken the interior either by adjusting material settings through the Editor tab of the Surfaces pane or by putting a point light inside and giving it a negative Luminosity value.

Prince Wao

"... a point light inside and giving it a negative Luminosity value"! I didn't even know that was possible, but it sounds excellent! Thanks.

richardandtracy

I give the whole character's skin a negative emissivity of -1500 lumens per square metre. It amplifies the ambient occlusion. You could do the same for the inside of the mouth and tongue. Saves having to parent a light to the character.

sunnyjei

Have you tried making the teeth higher in the mouth or getting rid of them? (both I believe are options in the shape/parameter tabs)

Frinkky

It all comes down to lighting - if you don't want an illuminated mouth then just don't shine a light in there...

CHWT

sunnyjei said:

Have you tried making the teeth higher in the mouth or getting rid of them? (both I believe are options in the shape/parameter tabs)

That's exactly what I do. From my very own observation not too many people have their upper teeth shown when they say 'ah' in the normal manner. With the figure in zero pose I turn the 'ah' viseme to 100% and then move the teeth up until I can't see the upper teeth in the front view.

Prince Wao

richardandtracy said:

I give the whole character's skin a negative emissivity of -1500 lumens per square metre. It amplifies the ambient occlusion. You could do the same for the inside of the mouth and tongue. Saves having to parent a light to the character.

Another handy suggestion! Thank you. 

Prince Wao

sunnyjei said:

Have you tried making the teeth higher in the mouth or getting rid of them? (both I believe are options in the shape/parameter tabs)

Moving the teeth nearly always has them poking through the skin somewhere., but deleting them would likley do the job in some scenes.

Prince Wao

Frinkky said:

It all comes down to lighting - if you don't want an illuminated mouth then just don't shine a light in there...

It's never that simple. For example, I may have a scene with 10 or more characters - the the same applies to less - and the lighting is exactly right for the them and for the entire composition, so altering optimum lighting for the sake of one character's mouth isn't a solution. The same applies to light in the nostrils as sometimes the only way to be rid of it is to have the light coming from behind, which defeats the point of the composition.