Case 9 Experimental Simulation!
Blender has a powerful rigid body physics system when can be used in games and animation. This part of the project is extremely new and has only been shown breifly before this meeting
- Assessing colisions between teeth during orthodontic treatment planning
- Physical modelling of occlusion in prosthetic or orthodontic treatment planning
- Modelling of the TMJ movements
- Import the Night Guard *.stl dataset. Instead of trimming all these teeth, we will add a temporary set of teeth as a place holder.
- Draw an arch curve along the cetral fossa of the upper posterior teeth and cingula of the upper canines/incisors
- Use the Occlusal Setup to Curve function to apply the tooth library to the curve
- Delete the large STL files, we just needed them to approximate teeth.
- Select the Anterior 6 teeth on the top or bottom, and move and rotate them to simulate some crowding
- Or download this file and start from here
The way I currently have this implemented. Is do our physics simulation in a separate Scene with "duplicate" objects. We run the simulation separately, and if we like the result, then copy the result back to our working scene. This allows us to "play" without worry of damaging or interferring with our hard work.
- Select the lower anterior teeth and a few posterior teeth to take into your simulation
- Press the "Add Physcis Scene" button. This will take you into a newly created scene. Unfortunately, it will also forget that you had the Orhtondotnics tab open, so you will have to turn it back on again in the ODC panel
- Press "Setup Physics Simulation." This will let blender know that all of these objects are able to interact and collide with each other. The button also tweaks a lot of settings in teh physics simulator to help get reasonable results
- Select and then press "Lock Teeth" for any teeth you want to remain stationary
- Select and then press "Limit Movements" and you can limit the amount any one tooth is allowed to tranlsate. For these crude initial simulations, no rotation is allowed.
- Press 'Alt A' or the Play Button in the Simulation Timeline to let the teeth interact. You will see that they fly apart.
- Press the reset button to rewind to the initial frame.
- Adjust the positions of the teeth and repeat the simulation
- Try several times, with Limit and Unlimit Movements and with different initial starting positions.
- WARNING, THIS MAY CAUSE CRASHES. Don't be alarmed if Blender unexpectedly closes.
