MORPHING Exercise

For the activity, you are going to morph a head of a monkey which I have created for you.

http://www.mediafire.com/?6768rl3jau6r527

Try This!

1. Load the ‘monkey – MORPHING.max’ which I provided in the link above.

2. There are three objects on the scene: monkeysmile, monkeysad and monkeyhead. The morph targets are the monkeysmile and monkeysad, while the monkeyhead is the original mesh.

Click on the monkeyhead mesh and go to modifier list and select ‘Morpher’.

3. On the ‘Channel List’ roll-out, right-click on the first empty slot and pick on the monkeysmile mesh.

4. Do the same thing for the monkeysad morph target.

5. Hide the two morph targets and move the original mesh at the center of the scene. Maximize the Perspective viewport.

6. Move the Track Slider to Frame 50 and increase the value of monkeysmile to 100. Don’t forget to press the Autokey button.

7. Again, move the Track Slider to Frame 100. This time decrease the value of monkeysmile to 0 while increasing the value of monkeysad to 100.

8. Deactivate the Autokey button and press on the Play button to see how the morphing works on the monkey’s head.

This is how morphing is used in facial animations. However, there are other techniques you can use when doing facial animations. For example, you can use bones to animate the cheeks and show how detailed your facial animation can be. Remember the movie The Hulk. They used bones to animate the cheeks of the Hulk.