CompuServe Messages

Jim, I see a possible problem with morphing from one object to the next by fading two states in and out. Halfway through the morph, object1 will be 50% transparent, and so will object 2. The result will indeed be a half-and-half composite of both attributes, but the result will still be 25% transparent! A better solution is to enclose object2, fully opaque, with a "shell" made up of object 1, scaled to 1.01. You can then morph object1 from opaque to transparent, and the composite result is always fully opaque, since the inner object is opaque. If your object is complex, e.g. it has holes which don't scale in the right direction when you scale the entire object, you may have to pick groups of points using the lasso or drag box, and drag the points one pixel away from the surface. This would need to be done for each group of surfaces which needs to be moved in a different way. For example, if your object is an extruded "O", facing you in the Front view, select Drag box, Pick points. Select all front points and move them -.001 in Y. Select the back points and move them .001 in Y. Then select all points on the edges of the object's hole, and scale them in X and Z by .999. Select the points on the outer rim of the object, and scale them in X and Z by 1.001. The result is an object which looks practically the same, but encloses the original version on all sides. Blaq!