Moho Forum

Hi
It occurred to me today whether it is possible to use ready shapes for morphing.
I have, for instance, an anime file with a face looking front and another one with the same face in 3/4 position.
Both have the same number of points. How interesting it would be if whenever I need to morph a face between front and 3/4 I didn`t need to draw second position from first again.
I would import "front", then import "3/4", have each one in a different action and animation ready with a few clicks.
I couldn't find a way of doing it. Is it possible? Or should we wait for this feature in version 8?
Tks

Technically it's possible (it's just point animation), artistically it's a mess because a head turn is a projection of points on a 3D object projected on a 2D plane, not a straight translation of points in 2D.

slowtiger wrote:Technically it's possible (it's just point animation), artistically it's a mess because a head turn is a projection of points on a 3D object projected on a 2D plane, not a straight translation of points in 2D.

I was thinking of a way of building a library with different views of a character (or prop) and reuse them everytime I need.
For instance: I created a scene with a turning head. Then I create a second scene whith the same starting point, but head ends up in a different position.
After these two scenes I have already three different head positions somewhere in my computer. One "starting point" and two different "end points".
Then someday I need a turning head which starts with one of the two "end points" and ends with the other "end point".
If I could use morphing just importing ready drawings I have in my computer this third animation would be a few clicks away. But no. things will be more complicated.
I can use the drawing with the first "end point" position, but the for the end position, I have to adjust point by point. All to end up with a shape I already have ready in my computer but could not use.

A qualified yes, but it takes careful planning. You can do this a couple ways.

You can use switch interpolation to create your "morph" targets.

You can use actions and morph blends in the same way. See this thread: Turning head with blend morphs

You can't import an anme file as an action, but see this script by Rudiger that may allow you to do this with some restrictions: Import Animation Script (Content Paradise product)

The thing with morph (blends) is that the interpolation will usually produce some strange inbetweens. You'll still have to tweak them (or create another morph). Morphs will save you time, but as with all tools, you have to use your artistic sense to make sure it looks good.

That sounds promising, neeters. I'll give it a try.
Tks a lot.

Here is a blendmorph I made not long ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4usQWhLT ... TuHqOdCkFc here is the file for v8 [url]http://w ... cjdx0usise

Lesser quality file for v6
http://www.mediafire.com/?h6ue6706j9dd36x

Though not perfect, it should give you an idea.

rather than having two files, create a single file with the head and create an action for every rotation. Then you can blend them together, although I wouldn't reccomend using blend morphs as you can only seem to blend a single pose at a time.

MorphDials allow you to get around this, and for example, blend a look down into the middle of a turn left so the face moves in an arch (which should make slowtiger happy ) rather than a straight 1:1 blend.

blend morphs will pull back to their starting position pose rather than blend relative to eachother...

I tried morph dials with that same head, and at one point it became quite slow.

I would like a setup where we could have say 9 actions of a head in every direction them have them morph properly, as morph dials seems to do, but even on my new system it gets to a crawl at one point!

In any cases, as mentioned here, it is quite a complex task and requires some practice.

I like to keep it simple as much as possible and use good old tricks for head turns, like I did for my Homer dialogue test!

You will have to see and try for yourself Wagnun, hard work will get you there!

Hey Gilles,
Yes, unfortunately MDs become too slow due to the way it bends the program to its will which is why you have to start using bake actions. Infact, the embed script that allows the live preview isn't even necessary - you can just use bake to put down the 'mix' which gets you back to real time preview (newer version has a 'bake current frame' button, but that's not public yet)

There is a simple solution that would give MDs as live a feedback as BMs which is for SM to include an option to blend relative (infact, it would also make BMs actually usable in production) - if anyone is interested and hasn't already commented, i opened a feature request here: viewtopic.php?t=19230

Yeah, been to that post, also mentioned that blend morph, even though a great tool, is too linear. Hopefully MD tool will solve this for production purpose.

wagmun wrote: Both have the same number of points.

I don't think it's as simple as that. I believe the vectors have their own id's, so, those would have to match up to get a 'correct' morph. This is the reason you duplicate the layer in switches - to maintain those id's.

wagmun wrote:

slowtiger wrote:Technically it's possible (it's just point animation), artistically it's a mess because a head turn is a projection of points on a 3D object projected on a 2D plane, not a straight translation of points in 2D.

I was thinking of a way of building a library with different views of a character (or prop) and reuse them everytime I need.
For instance: I created a scene with a turning head. Then I create a second scene whith the same starting point, but head ends up in a different position.
After these two scenes I have already three different head positions somewhere in my computer. One "starting point" and two different "end points".
Then someday I need a turning head which starts with one of the two "end points" and ends with the other "end point".
If I could use morphing just importing ready drawings I have in my computer this third animation would be a few clicks away. But no. things will be more complicated.
I can use the drawing with the first "end point" position, but the for the end position, I have to adjust point by point. All to end up with a shape I already have ready in my computer but could not use.

Hey Wagmun, that's a good idea and it's something a lot of animators do when they do it frame by frame. It's more time consuming initially but like you said, you can reuse a lot of it later. I'm doing the same thing right now with some FBF stuff I've been toying with.

GCharb wrote:Here is a blendmorph I made not long ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4usQWhLT ... TuHqOdCkFc here is the file for v8 [url]http://w ... cjdx0usise

Lesser quality file for v6
http://www.mediafire.com/?h6ue6706j9dd36x

Though not perfect, it should give you an idea. [/url]

Hey GC, that's a great little video! I'm trying to download the zip file now, from your link, but it seems to be hanging up on me. It says "Your download is starting" but it just stays there for a long time and doesn't actually download. I'll keep trying =)

Update: Sorry it actually DID download but I didn't see it on my list because the file name was different than what it showed on the site. I'll look at it after lunch! Thanks!!