Morph

What is an Endomorph?

Sometimes, when you are changing the shape of your objects in Layout, you’ll find that the deformations you can get with bones just aren’t accurate enough. Fortunately, you can also force an object to change its shape into the shape of another object. This is called morphing. Morphing gives you total control, since you can manually place all the points exactly where you want them.

You can use morphing to help create character facial expressions, to make a flower bloom, to transform a boat into a car, and then into a rocket; anything you want to do, as long as both objects have the same point count and order.

The different states, or poses, of a morph are generally referred to as morph targets. They are made using morph maps, which are a form of Vertex Maps that define the different positions for the points. The original state of the object is known as the Base. The map is known as an Endomorph, and is incorporated right into the Object file, like any other VMap. If you copy and paste the object, all its morphs are copied and pasted right along with it.

When you make a morph, you can push and pull the points around, and place them anywhere you like. However, although it’s possible to add or subtract geometry within a morph, it’s strongly recommended that you refrain from doing so, and make all such modifications to the Base object instead. Otherwise, you can end up with incorrect point orders.

• New Endomorph

• Bkg to Morph

• Apply Morph

• Create Joint Morph

note

Contributed by Richard Feeney