Good idea

Absolutely. They’d have to use more, smaller motors, but it will definitely be the next step. I hope they do it soon because this resurgence of shoddy fake looking muppet style practical effects looks like crap. We moved to CG for a reason…

Relatively not hard to implent kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o8yZha1i1s24n5c.html

The problem becomes that a mechanical face can't move in the same way a face made of muscle and bone can (Yet). You can make an approximation by letting certain set parts of a human face control certain servos and actuators in combination, but you can't really have the same level of fine control over the entire surface.

I'd be interested to see if someone could take a completed animatronic and train a neural network to take the face capture data from the actor and replicate it on puppet

I see what you did there

Pun intended?

Yes zbrush mostly today , and clay also . with advancement of technology, you can eliminate processes.

Cost. Animatronics not only need to be built and have puppeteers operating them, but they usually lack a lot of mobility, so many different animatronics usually need to be built to fill each specific use case in a movie. A 3D model only needs to be built once, never breaks down, has unlimited levels of flexibility and mobility, and can be shared among an entire team of animators all working on different shots at the same time while principle talent isn't on set (therefore much cheaper), as well as being able to iterate VFX shots multiple times instead of just being locked to what was caught in-camera. Don't get me wrong, I love practical effects, but the cost difference is great enough where it's a _really_ hard point to argue when negotiating a budget for a movie.

@@ZachHixsonTutorialsThis and also, practical effects artists tend to be older and unionised. There are way more scrappy, fresh out of school VFX artists around willing to do enormous amounts of work on weird schedules for very little money without complaining to anyone official. And their bosses went through the same conditions ten / fifteen years ago so they’ve got no one to tell them this might not be ideal. Typically the older professions in show-business are more likely to demand proper treatment and payment. Marvel will even unnecessarily composite entire CG costumes over actors bodies rather than dealing with the unionised costume artists.

Disney throw loads of money on those machine. Rnd cost like millions, those money could get a lot more done with cgi

Money. It's expensive. I heard that a Gravity Falls scene made in claymation they had to fight for to budget for every single frame since it is much more expensive than the regular animation.

​@@ZachHixsonTutorialsone way joints are a thing of the past the cost is insignificant compared to some movie ideas using CGI it used to be cheaper to crash a boing 747 than to have a team create it on screen these are real hobbieists and creators I'd imagine for a good wage the honour of doing it and maybe a piece of the massive sales would be enough for them just so they can do what they love. Most CGI is an uninvited eye fxxx

You actually can test this idea by physically moving your jaw side to side Good observation

Personally id add some eyebrow movement if its a character. But maybe thats less realism and more expression

What about if each side of the jaw moved independently?