#Master Morphers?
24 messages in this thread
Oh, to all the animation masters out there…would you be so kind to lend me a
little of your wisdom? I'm trying some simple morphing for a presentation in a
couple of weeks.
I'm taking one company logo and morphing it into another. All the symbols and
letters, I've morphed just fine except for two particular letters. I'm trying
to morph an O into a C and an R into an S. The inside of the O and R I'm
shrinking down to something very small, but it seems that the remaining
vertices get a little twisted and don't form the exact shape of the letter they
should be morphing to. Any suggestions? I think I'm following all the rules:
Both shapes contain the same number of vertices.
The shape steps remain the same.
The path contains the same number of vertices.
The path step setting remains the same.
The Tween button remains unchanged.
The Optimization option is off.
The Weld Vertices option is off.
Thanks!
Terry
I've always subscribed to the idea of doing 2D morphing for logos and stuff
like that. There are a number of good 2D morph packages out there, Elastic
Reality on SGI or MAC being the best, IMHO, and they allow you an amazing
degree of control and realism (with a little practice you'll never know it was
a 2D image manipulation) far easier and more efficently than 3DS morphing.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
John,
This is a quote from the latest "3D Artist", talking about NAB…
"…ASDG previewed Elastic Reality for Windows…". Do you know about this? I
thought I remember you mentioning that you asked them about a Win version at
NAB and didn't get a real answer.
David
I know, I just saw that in 3D Artist this afternoon. I didn't notice Elastic
Reality for Windows (then, I wasn't looking too close, maybe I missed it?), and
the sales guy I talked to didn't give me a real answer. But it makes perfect
sense that they come out with one for windows. I'm really amazed that so many
companies don't come out immediately with windos stuff, like Aldus/CoSA
Aftereffects, ASDG's Abekas=>PC interface, Elastic Reality, etc… Is there
that much more of a MAC animation market? I don't know that many shops using
MACs for anything more that DTP and file managment on SGI networks.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
The Mac first, Windows later philosophy that so many software companies
seem to have is extremely irritating. Even when the stuff finally makes it to
the PC, alot of the time its permenently a full version behind… just when you
catch up to the mac version after months of waiting, a new mac upgrade comes
out. It drives me nuts!
David
I get pretty frustrated with that MAC then PC stuff, too. I think Elastic
Reality for the MAC goes for under $500.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
I thought it was something like $795 list, but maybe they dropped the
price, or I just might of heard it wrong in the first place.
David
You could be right. I was over at a guy's house who had it, and he spewed
something like $495, but maybe that's what he payed for it, or maybe it's an
old price, or maybe my gray cell count is lower than I though <g>.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
David:
I had a talk with Perry, the President of ASDG, who gave me a demo of Elastic
Reality on Windoze – it should be done Real Soon Now! Until it is, my favorite
by far is Blackbelt's Winimages:Morph. It includes animated morphing, also.
Greg Pyros
Hi Greg,
Glad to hear its coming out soon. Of course, I won't be able to get it
until a project requires it unless the price comes down from what I think its
gonna be. I agree with you on the blackbelt package, I've got it (as a matter
of fact, I got it from you !).
David
John,
Actually, from a front view in 2D, all the letters and parts of the logos morph
perfectly. It's only with a couple of letters in 3D that I have the problem.
I want to fly the camera around the 3D morphing, so with 2D I don't get the
effect I'm looking for. Seems like perhaps it should only be another guideline
or rule that I'm missing, but I don't seem to be able to figure it out. I mean
letters are fairly simple objects…seems like it might be a nightmare to morph
some of the more complex ones. Thanks anyway!
Terry
There is a better way, and it is morphing of dissimilar vertex count objects.
I believe someone is working on an IPAS to do this, and I know this feature is
availble in other packages. Basically it decimates the vertices in the object
(pulverizes it), then builds them into the next object. Pretty cool.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
It's not available right now though, eh?
>>Seems like perhaps it should only be another guideline or rule that I'm
missing…<<
I think John's already addressed this. The problem you're having has to do with
attempting to morph between an object with a hole in it (such as an R or and e)
and one without a hole. (Or is it the other way around.) That type of setup
just doesn't work well with morphing. Try morphing a torus into a cylinder and
you'll see.
As has been mentioned, you can "cheat" this by creating the R with a slice so
it's not really closed. I'd probably use a combination of morphing and a
cross-fade in Video Post. In other words, begin with the legit R, and then
cross-fade to the sliced R just before the morph.
– Jack
Actually, I have tried putting a tiny hole in the letters to morph into the
center part of the "R" and "A", but the vertices in 3D just don't behave. I
haven't used Video Post yet, but have done cross-fading with Animator Pro. I'm
not taking this to video, but using the PC direct for this presentation. Is
there much to that technique? Thanks!
>> Is there much to that technique?<<
Assuming you're talking about the Video Post crossfade, you basically render
the first part of the animation with one object, the second with another, and
then cross fade between them. However, there are others on this forum who are
experts on the use of Video Post and can, no doubt, give you detailed
instructions. (Any volunteers?)
– Jack
I missed the first part of your message. I've spent a lot of time working on
how to morph 3D letters and numbers so I might be able to help you. Please
repeat the question and I'll give it a try.
Michele
I'm trying to morph one company logo into another for a presentation next week.
Basically it's a couple of letters I'm having problems with. I'm trying to
morph an "S" into an "A", with little success. Since the "A" has a hole in it,
I thought I'd put a tiny unnoticable hole into the "S" and it would morph into
the center part of the "A". I've followed all the rules (same vertices, shape
steps, etc.), and from a 2D perspective everything looks cool. But from the
camera view, some of the vertices in 3D get twisted. Trying to do the same
thing with a "C" and an "R". Any ideas?
Terry
One quick fix for morphing letters problems is to try morphing backward. For
example, instead of morphing from the S to the A, try morphing from the A to
the S. If it works without pinching, just use that animation in reverse. (If
you don't know how to reverse the animation just ask — the technique differs
depending on whether you're making a flic or recording to video.)
I once did an animation of a morphing countdown, 9 8 7 6 etc. It worked pretty
well as I used a straight shape like a 1 as the base, and in my mind I twisted
it like a tube to make the numbers, and placed the vertices on the shapes
accordingly. I made the 8 as one tube, just curved around without any holes.
I tried a variety of ways to make it with holes as you did and none of them
worked, so I don't recommend this. Just make the A as one shape.
I'm sure you already checked that the "first" vertices are aligned, but I
thought I'd mention it again just in case.
Let me know if any of these things help (or not)… if you still don't get the
results you want let me know and I'll try it on this end.
Michele
PS. By the way this is all covered in my book Morphing & Animation, available
from Greg Pyros. (I put this info in a book because so many of my students
asked me this question.)
Michele,
The morphing backwards seems to work better…still not perfect, but good
enough for this purpose. As it turns out, the animation is now 56M large, but
it looks pretty good. The problem now is that I only have a 486 with 16M RAM
at home, where I've been working on this each night. My office PC is a Pentium
with 32M RAM, but the animation will only run from disk at home. I'll take it
into work tomorrow to see if 32M RAM will be enough. I wonder if I'll need 64M
RAM instead? Is there some guideline that can tell us how much RAM we should
have in our PCs based on animation size, or is it just as simple as "if you
want it to all run in available RAM, make sure the size of the file is less
than the PC's RAM"?
I'm interested in your book. Is it published, or is Greg the only source?
Terry
Terry:
>> [book]… is Greg the only source?
Maybe not, but he is the _best_ source! <bg> (714) 833-0334
Greg Pyros
The book is self-published. We prefer to sell individual copies through
dealers though. The book is available from Opamp books in Los Angeles (800)
468-4322 and Digimation in Louisiana (800) 854-4496 as well as from Pyros. If
you give me your address I will have someone send you a brochure if you like.
There are three books in the series: Glass & Reflection, Shaping & Lofting and
the one I told you about, Morphing & Animation. There are also three more
books slated for release in July.
Michele
>>morphing O to C, etc., twisted vertices…
Terry,
As Mr Manual states on pg 8-61, morphing between two different objects can be
"unpredictable." Not only do the vertex counts have to be the same (as you
made sure of with your list of rules), but as the beginning positions of the
vertices on the 1st object are simply moved to the relative positions of the
"corresponding" vertices of the second object, the morph pair must also be
*topologically* equivalent for a predictable morph. That is to say, morphing
an object with a hole into one without a hole will probably end up with a small
mess.
The last time I did that ("E" to "e") I made an equivalent "e" with a fake hole
(split at the right of the horizontal bar of the "e"). The morph caused the
top horiz bar of the "E" to droop down and join up with the middle bar to give
the appearance of a perfect "e".
For the "O" to "C", you might try creating a split "O" and morph it into the
"C". The "R" to "S" would be more challanging. Note that most people give up
at this point and do some clever cross-fading between two partial morphs in
VideoPost, i.e., perhaps starting from the end of your current morph attempt,
dissolve to a perfect final logo.
J K J
John,
Sigh…I appreciate the feedback, and I've had pretty good success after a good
amount of trial and error (moving vertices around to get them to be close
"topologically"), but after a while of that, I was hoping that there was simply
a better technique. Of course the cross-fading idea crossed my mind too, but I
figured that if there was a better way, someone out there would have already
figured it out.
It must really be challenging then to morph much more complex objects than just
simple letters! From the 2D perspective, these letters morph perfectly, but in
3D, it's another story. Oh well, back to the rockpile…