Friday, June 27, 2008

Hitting your Morph Targets

Friday June 27, 2008

Hello Again! It's another lovely warm summer night here in the old gray cat's loft, and I'm here with more stuff to share. The topic for this session is Graphics and the focus will be on a very useful 3D technique. I've been working on a project in Anim8or that required some facial animation. I decided to make use of morph targets to move the characters mouth, eyelids and eyebrows in a convincing manner. To use morph targets you define the start and ending positions for the points (vertexes) of a 3D object. The rendering software can then fill in the intermediate in-between positions, creating a smooth animated sequence. It's just the thing for lip-syncing recorded speech to an animated mouth. One of the drawbacks to this technique is that it becomes unwieldy when dealing with more than a few points. A partial solution is to define your object as a subdivision or spline surface, reducing the number of points to translate. Try it for yourself the next time you need add a bit of expression to your animation.


The picture of the week was created using Anim8or.

Click on the image for a full-sized view


The loops of the week are a set of synthesized samples.


The PC game of the week was Travian once more. I've been recruited into an alliance and now stand a significantly better chance of survival.


The Movie/DVD of the week was “Hellboy


The diversion of the week was Sudoku.


Send your comments and feedback and I’ll read it all and respond to some of it.
Bye for now!

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