Computer facial modeling and animation has been an interest of computer graphics researchers for many years. This is not only because the face itself is an interesting object, but also because facial animation finds application in many other disciplines (for example, entertainment, medical education, telecommunication, psychology, medicine, and linguistics). Because the mandible motion plays a major role in modeling facial motion, its study is of significance to each of those disciplines as well. In addition, the mandible itself is an object of study in the area of clinical science.;Current facial movement models in computer animation have difficulty dealing with facial movements that are strongly determined by the mandible, such as chewing. This thesis proposes new computer models of the mandible that address this problem. First, a geometric mandible model is proposed to simulate typical motion features of the mandible such as opening, closing, protruding, and lateral shifting. While this model is simple and successful, it has drawbacks when applied to motions as complicated as chewing. Therefore, a physically-based model is also proposed to deal with these drawbacks. This physically-based mandible model is then integrated with a spring-based physical facial model to automatically simulate motions such as chewing.
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