Technical Artist Greg Hendrix Shows How to Add Jaw Transition to a Facial Rig, and Why You Should

We all think of character jaw animation as a series of rotations, but did you know that in real life the jaw also translates? The Temporomandibular Joint or TMJ rotates and moves outward at the same time: jaw translation as well as rotation.

Technical artist Greg Hendrix offers some insights into how the TMJ works, and how to create a similar movement in a character’s facial rig. “the condyle of the mandible is the part of the jaw moving over the bump, which is called the articular eminence.” Hendrix notes. Greg walks through the setup which uses Unit Conversions and a couple Remap nodes that input into jaw translation.

In the end, a simple rotation from the controller will also inherently have realistic jaw translation as well.