Quote - But now I'm also wondering if I shouldn't use three tongue actors instead of just two. Because my tongue bends at a different spot when I curl the tip up than when I bend it down. I know some people use more than three, but Antonia's tongue doesn't have all that many polygons, and I honestly don't think she needs to be able to tie a cherry stem into a knot with it.

I agree it is not necessary to tie a cherry stem. On the other hand it would be nice if she could run the tip of her tongue round the inside of her lips, or touch the tip of her tongue to the tip of her nose. Nice, but not essential. I have tried to get good bending of the tongue in a number of different ways, playing with the joint parameters, using morphs, and using magnets.

Morphs have the problem that they can not accurately describe an arc. A morph that looks right with the tongue tip bent up at 90° will look wrong at 45°. The most promising approach I tried was to use 3 or 4 ERC controlled magnets. Whilst this provided a high degree of flexibility, it was not without its problems, it was complicated to set up, and required some practice to use well. I never got past the prototype stage and moved on to other things.

If you are going to keep the current tongue groups, I'm sure you are aware that the tongue JPs could use some improvement. If it were me I would try moving the tongue2 origin forwards, increase the inclusion angle for jointx and jointy to about 90°, and decrease the exclusion angle of both. Perhaps the tongue bending would benefit from jointx and jointy channels in tongue1, but I'm not sure on that. The smooth scale channels also deserve attention.

Finally the idea of adding another tongue actor, I suspect this is the best way to go, perhaps even two new actors! And dare I say it  at this stage of development? Perhaps even a new tongue geometry. Whilst the current geometry looks very anatomically accurate, the way it attaches to the floor of the mouth does not give much scope for scaling tongue1 lengthwise. Yes it would be a major step to change the geometry at this stage, but if the UV mapping did not change too radically, it might have minimal impact on textures. Perhaps a whole new tongue geometry is a step too far, but I definitely like the idea of an extra tongue actor.

I have not seen any tongue morphs yet.