[studiogio]

I'm creating an animation showing how a particular prosthodontist prepares a tooth for a porcelain crown. My challenge is to make a dentist's drill make cuts into a tooth. I've been experimenting with cloth and soft dynamics with tweaked settings to simulate this. I 've also tried make the objects hypervoxels with the bur set to additive and the tooth set to negative. No luck. I'm a medical animator and have yet to see anyone demonstrating tutorials on cutting and drilling objects with instruments.
See attached jpeg with the objects I'm working with. Any help is much appreciated. Thank you.

[NoStr0m0]

Just an idea.... you could try using a morph to simulate the drilling and add some paticles for smoke and tooth bits :-D

[Sal]

u could use the subtract tool in modeler to cut the cuts and save the subtracted peices on a different layer cut them into very small peices and put each one their own layer. Make sure none of the peices' coordanates have been moved. In layout you can remove or make the peices disapear as the end of the drill hits them, slowly making the cut apear as it goes. The smaller the peices the smoother the cut. I know this is how in general you can make rocks split and things fall appart.

just a suggestion

[Warlock 279]

I second Nostromo's suggestion to use morphs. Be the quickest way in my opinion, and offer a fair amount of control as well.

[studiogio]

Thank you all for your replies. It's much appreciated.

I think I'll try the morphs with particles. I had tried this before but it was difficult to make the cuts on the tooth to be in sync with the drill bur hitting it. See my Flash animation:
http://www.justhitplay.net/animation
click on 'Crown Preparation'

I'm wondering if there's an expression or something to cause the tooth to morph where it needs to be only when the drill hits it in places.