I’ve seen someone create a morph animation using AM 5.0 and they said with 9.x it should be a lot easier. Yet, I cannot find a single tutorial out there on how to morph one model into another or part of one model into another. Someone please point me in the right direction.
Thanks
I think the only way you’re gonna be able to do this is if both the objects are of the same geometry. You can’t just take a sphere and a cube and expect them to morph. Pose sliders(Im still using v.8.5) are your closest thing to “morphing”.
Ewdean, Im not smacking you down but I wouldnt ask this if I didnt see it with my own eyes. A guy morphed a sphere into a Model T car and I have the AVI to prove it. I do not have the AVI to prove it here but I can later this week. I remember some instruction saying make the model like another model and scale it on the percentage scale until you get to 100% thus making one model into the form of another. Thats all good and stuff, but I havent a clue how to do this procedure. Help.
What exactly did you see?
Did you see the step-by-step process he went through to create this morph using v5, or did you just see the final animation?
Because if you saw the step-by-step process, like your first email reads, then what was your brain doing while you where watching?
But if you just saw the final animation, and you took his word that he created it in AM…well then I’d like to hear from someone who knows how to accomplish this too because this would be a function I’m unfamiliar with.
p.s. Reread my previous post for clues on how to accomplish morphing.
-edits-
It’s my understanding that whatever geometry you start out with is the only geometry you have to work with FOR ANY morphing. What I meant by the sphere/cube example is that if your sphere has 100 control points, and you have a separate model of a cube that has 8 control points…you’re never gonna get the sphere to morph into the cube…not in this software.
Hey I’d like to see that morph tutorial also if someone knows of it… There’s a stand-alone software available however that does some pretty amazing work for morphing one image into the next if you want to check it out… http://www.blackbeltsystems.com/bx_wi_mee.html
With all the constraints involved with biped, quadruped characters etc, it may be easier to use this software and separate models :shrug: I think that would be a good feature request for hash tho, may never happen…
BTW, with a little creativity, ver. 10 utilizes “expressions” to do some nice tricks, could give that a try, still using 8.5…
there’s a free program called ‘winmorph’ that seems to be able to do everything that the $20 morph program can do.
A 1000 times no. I’m not talking about a point to point Morph on a 2-D scale, I’m talking about morphing one model in to another using AM and only AM, ok, maybe a plugin or two. I’m going to make this a mission to find this out because I cannot be the only one to ask this. Murc, I actually have that program on an old CD I bought many years ago. That kind of morphing is not what Im after. Nerrazzi, youll be the first one Ill tell about any extensive Morphing tutorial using AM. As far as for you edean, my brain does not turn off to gathering information, as yours seems to do when it comes to politeness. The word cant is just another reason why people create program patches so dont count it out.
Look Fox…this is my last post for your benefit.
Believe me, you’re not the first person to wonder about this, and you’re not gonna be the last. AM has been out for more than 10 years. Don’t you think that if what your after could be achieved, there WOULD be a tutorial for it somewhere, or that it would be in the manual?
The reason you haven’t found any tutorials on separate mesh morphing in AM is because there aren’t any functions in the software that accomplish that task. Do you UNDERSTAND that? There aren’t any plugins which exist either. You can only fake it like your friend did using the scale percentages for each model. And that’s not a true mesh morph like I’m assuming you’re after.
Out of the box, AM will not morph between 2 different models which contain different numbers of control points. That’s the answer to your question, and it’s the third time it’s been repeated.
In order to get a TRUE mesh morph in AM, the first model is going to have to be manually transformed into the second model. This is accomplished by working in muscle mode.
You gotta pull those points, buddy, if you want a true mesh morph.
Good luck on your search, though.
This could probably be done using the conform plug-in to force the first model to take the basic shape of the second model; however, in order for this to be realy effective you would probably need to make a pose for each model. IF conform can be used in a pose window then you would conform one object to the other at 100% of the pose slider, and do the same with the other model. In an action I would have the first model remain active with the second model inactive till about 50% of the way through the morph. Then I would switch them and finish the morph with the second model. I would also animate the surfaces to fade in color to simulate any changes in color betwen the two models. Technicaly this could be done manualy, but it would be much harder than letting a plug-in deform the meshes.
http://www.kci-group.com/z/conform.htm
Of course this is all dependent on the big IF above.
I will also tell you there is no way in A:M 5-10.5 to directly morph between two models that doesn’t involve a pose slider/relationship/action of either 2 models that were manualy adjusted to look simmilar at the mid point, or just manualy tweek one model into the second model. With out the use of a plug-in simmilar to conform. As A:M 4 was a totaly diferent beast then A:M 5+ and I’ve not but dabbled with it ages ago, I can not say how possible it was with that version.
Speaking of changing colour, could anyone tell me how to put colour or transparency properties of a group into a relationship? I basically want a group that makes a whole model transparent/translucent switchable on/off. On v8.0 I did this the old fasioned way by dragging the group above or below the “normal colour” group. I’ve tried adding an “on/off” property but it doesn’t seem to do anything and I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to drag n’ drop or keyframe or what… All I need is a hint on the right direction to follow.
Tried RTFMing and looking for relevant tutorials, no luck. TIA
The guy that morphed the ball into the truck was Javier Poot…here’s what he said about it:
[B]Actually I use AM 7.1, so I’m quite sure it would be easy for
you to accomplish similar effects with a later version like 9.0.
In fact it should be easier really. The problem lies in the fact that
the solution I chose was very specific to the morph. I can tell
you how I did it,but to accomplish a more complex object morph
(i.e.morphing during animation, or just a portion of an object is
morphed, or different parts of and object are morphed at different
times) you may need to do something very different.That being said,
I hope you are very familiar with your version of AM because I will
not explain all the minute details. If you need clarification on
anything don’t hesitate to ask.The first thing to do is have the objects you wish to morph fully
modelled. In my case I had a sphere with 12 lathe sections and a
cartoon truck off the AM cd. I don’t know who created the original.
Next I created a new action for the sphere and dropped the truck
onto it as an action object. I locked the truck’s cps and went into
muscle mode and pushed the sphere’s cps around until they approximated
the shape of the truck. Then created a pose from the action. Next a
new choreography was created and a floor model was added as well as
key and fill lights. The sphere and truck were dropped in the choreography
and the truck was de-activated using the “ACTIVE” checkbox. The sphere was
made to change shape at thirty frames using the pose slider. The “ACTIVE”
channel was also edited to de-activate at frame 31. The truck is activated
on frame 31 as well. This sets up the basic morph.Now, if you were to do this it wouldn’t look very good because you’d
have a ball morphing into a slab-like form and then popping into a
truck. But, because the camera is fixed in this case, a render of the
truck could be made and decaled unto the morphed sphere from the camera
view. The value of the color map is animated over time with a value of
0 at frame 0, and 100 at frame 30. I also added a displacement map in
the same way to augment the effect of the shape of the truck, I kept
the value of the displacement very low to avoid tearing on the patches.I added a little stretching to the truck at the end to accentuate the
movement of the morph. Then I just rendered with motion blur and film
softening on an that’s it. Please note that this is just a rough test
of this kind of effect. With some time and effort this could be refined
into a very smooth, complex motion. Hope this helps.Javier[/B]
Hope this is what you were looking for…incidentally, here is his website (it’s still under construction):
http://home.earthlink.net/~javierpoot/
I found this out by using the mailing list archive, that’s located here:
Bloody Heck! This was the instructions he wrote to me almost 9 months ago! He told me it would be easier with 9.0 than with his version. Let’s see how mu luck holds out. Itsjustme THANK YOU very very much. That’s the one. I’ll be back after about 50 tries at this.
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