Can anyone explain how morph targets works?

[Col Klink]

Anim8or uses this type of animation to do vertex type animations. As I understand it multiple targets are added to transition or morph from one 3d object to another and so on. I guess the software handles the interpolation to smoothly morph through each additional object in the sequence to accomplish the total morph effect. Are there other modeling softwares that can do this stuff and how does it work? I have yet to explore the area much but hope that it proves of some possible use for vertex type animations used by BZII. Thanks, Leroy aka Klink....

[General BlackDragon]

BBB can explain some about vertex animation.

[Zax]

It won't. The only thing that can correctly do vert anims is the original softimage (that'd be nice) and apparently the new envelope exporter that only Nielk (creator) and Twosheds know how to utilize.

Both of those programs being very powerful graphical engines, not sure it'll have the backbone to allow scripting of the nature.

[MrTwosheds]

Nielk1's envelope exporter, exports data from an active skin modifier to a text format compatible with xsi. In other words it allows you to avoid having to create the envelope data yourself in an xsi.
You can animate models in 3dsmax using the skin modifier and normal animations, run the script, then export model and animations to xsi as normal, then you just paste in the envelopes produced by the script at the bottom of the primary xsi.

[Nielk1]

Morphing is not a smart system that interpolates between two forms, it is a brute force and simple link of vertexes to bones where the bone objects are animated by normal means and the vertexes follow the actions of the bones depending on their weight (100.0 means it matches the bone identically, 50.0 means it matches it 50%). The way XSI lists these connections between bones and vertexes is very simple and should take about 5 minutes to write the code for once you figure out how to pull the required data out of the given source program. You need to find something analogous in the program to convert in the first place.

[Zenophas]

Wrong forum.

[bigbadbogie]

BBB can explain some about vertex animation.

Can he now...


I haven't done it since 2009 in the development of FS2.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Morphing is not a smart system that interpolates between two forms, it is a brute force and simple link of vertexes to bones where the bone objects are animated by normal means and the vertexes follow the actions of the bones depending on their weight (100.0 means it matches the bone identically, 50.0 means it matches it 50%). The way XSI lists these connections between bones and vertexes is very simple and should take about 5 minutes to write the code for once you figure out how to pull the required data out of the given source program. You need to find something analogous in the program to convert in the first place.

I know nothing about these algorithm sets or matrices, but you make it sound impressive to the lay person.

[Nielk1]

There are no matrices for bones aside from the actual bone object. Bone envelopes are simply a set of "X" is a mesh, "Y" is a bone that effects that mesh, and then it lists the vertex numbers from mesh X with the weights in order right after stating how many of these lines there will be.

Also, yes, wrong forum.

[MrTwosheds]

Xsi skin morphing is actually a fairly simple system, you animate an hp_object and attach vertex to it with envelopes, the envelopes are just a list identifying the vertex and its weight. Vertex do not have to be enveloped, or they can be referenced by multiple envelopes to create complex morphing motions.
I am slowly putting together another ugly beastie, that will hopefully demonstrate in bz2 what can now be achieved using the envelope script.

[Col Klink]

What really sucks the most is that morph target animation isn't really supported for user written ASL export scripts. Steve Glanville, the creator of Anim8or isn't apparently active in any further development of A8...

[Zax]

Yup, that really sucks.