I was reading a post about a marionette show yesterday on I09, when Team America was mentioned, I quote here

*"I remember hearing that when Parker and Stone first saw Thunderbirds (as ADULTS; they had managed to miss it before) they thought "why aren't more people doing this?" Then, after doing Team America, they said "we are never doing this again."

Marionettes is hard."*

that got me thinking. the actual marionette movement style wouldn't be to hard to replicate in poser.... but the jaw movement, that could be tricky. to those that never saw the shows, a solenoid built into the marionette's head would move the lower lip of the character to simulate speaking, (it's why the early heads were so big to the bodies, to allow space for the solenoid. )

so how to replicate that movement in poser with a range of figures.. (the rest of the face other than the eyes wouldn't move)

As the movement required is nearly linear, a morph would probably work, but you'd have to decide what to do about inner mouth parts and teeth etc.

Most figures come with a morph to open the mouth, so I fail to see what the problem is. Couldn't you just us the "Mouth Open" morph to open the mouth? Or am I missing the point somehow?

Attached Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwKLgTUb-EQ

it's not the mouth that opens at all, it's just the bottom lip that moves, it flicks up/down like a drawbridge, with a certain shape round the lip that moves with it. have a look at the link to see what I mean.

I'm not so sure a morph could do it. The lower lip of a super marionation figure is a detached piece; the lips are utterly rigid, and the lower lip just pivots downward. 'Thunderbirds' did the best job of hiding the seam (most cases, they used the craggy face shape on the men and hid the seams there; the females had, I beleive, a cloth lower face piece that was blended into separate pieces and made up, hiding that unaesthetic seam). If you could do a morph that did =not= deform any part of the geometry, it would work; but to do the smn style, you would need to cut the lower lip out of the mouth, and rig it to rotate, leaving all other lower facial controls alone.

Quote - ... you would need to cut the lower lip out of the mouth, and rig it to rotate, leaving all other lower facial controls alone.

The problem with any solution that splits the mesh, is that all other morphs will stop working. So while a rotation is really what's needed, the angle is required isn't big enough to rule out being able to get away with a morph (the final effect just has to look right, not necessarily replicate the original movement).

Using Wings and the Morphbrsh, I tried to make a morph for M3RR.

The render is untextured with the lip material colored so some stretching around the mouth corners is visible, but with a proper texture that blends the corners to the skin, this could be easily hidden.

As the lip moves along the y-axis only, I think a simple morph is "good enough" to get the proper Supermarionation effect.

Of course creating a lip prop and smart propping it to the head shouldn't be too hard, either.