Thursday 12 February 2009

Morphing

The morph tool works by making a "base" shape. Then creating one or more other shapes with similar vertices.
By then applying the morph modifier to the "base" shape, you can select "pick object from scene" from the Channel Parameters. You can then pick one of the other objects which you want your "base" object to mimic and morph to.
You can then select Auto Key on the timeline and then move to any frame, 30 for example, then using the morph modifier percentage up to 100%. This will then mimic the chosen object 100% over 30 frames. You can change the amount of frames and the percentage it mimics.
When using the morph tool the user must be sure that the "base" shape must have the same amount of vertices as the shape it is mimicking, otherwise it won’t work correctly. This means that you can’t move your "base" shape into a more complex shape.
The morph tool is also really good to use when modelling face shapes and facial expressions. Especially when lip syncing or moving eye brows.

To create my animation, I selected the teapot object as I thought this would be an interesting object to morph during animation. I then changed the teapot into an editable poly. I then cloned three copies of the object and changed them all into editable polys as well. On each of the cloned teapots I changed the way they looked in one way or another, a bigger spout, lid, and handle for example.
I applied the morph modifier to the "base" object and then picked each of the cloned teapots to mimic. With auto-key on the timeline turned on I animated the different parts of the teapot. The animation looks as if the teapot has been hit by some kind of magical spell and has sprung to life briefly.
I added a camera and had it rotate around the animated teapot during the course of the animation. Then I added two different lights coming from two different directions with ray traced shadows turned up to have a nicely rendered effect.


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