Hello,

I'm currently trying to do morph animations with
multiple target meshes. I found the docus you provide, but all these examples are solely for a
single base mesh and a single target mesh, although the pages show up several target meshes (which they don't use at all <sniff>

What I need is an animation, where the base mesh is interpolated to a primary target and from there to a secondary target an so on. The application is animating a beating heart. The problem is, that the heart deformation cannot be modelled via two simple meshes and a forward/ backward loop.

What I've tried so far is to import the meshes and to do a warp from A to B than B to C a.s.o., but the problem is, that the respective base meshes are visible.

Please could you guide me into the right direction.

With very best regards
gamester

Hi gamester,

Make sure you follow the instructions here when importing your obj files to create multiple morph targets:

http://developer.viewpoint.com/newsletter/2002/v02_i10_s04_p01.html

then, have a look at this example to see how to code you morph animations between multiple targets:

example:

http://3w3d.com/vet/morphs/

source:

http://3w3d.com/vet/morphs.zip

HTH,
Daimen

Thank you for the kind help duncan,

got it running! However, I do not unterstand the code in total, to be honest. I knew the newsletter and managed the base-single-target-case without any problems. The first part of your solution isn't difficult to understand, too, but the additional timelines, esp. the STOP property I didn't get. I just made a "generalization" of the code.

Would you be so kind to explain the semantics of "MTSTimeElem base" and "MTSTimeElem cycle" with an explicit sentence on "MTSTimeLine T3", please. I think there are shortcuts I didn't get (e.g. having 5 times and a 2 element time line a.s.o).

With very best regards
gamester

Hi gamester,

So lets start at the beginning... 'change' and 'change2' are the two morph targets, and 'base' is the original mesh. so a morph happens between the 'base' and the target at values between 0 and 1. So the 'base' mesh would morph halfway to 'change' at a value of 0.5

so far so good?

so the animation named 'base' sets both morphs (change and change2) to 0... this leaves you with the original mesh 'base'.

now the animation 'cycle' animates to each of the morphs (change and change2) at different keyframes, so the effect is morphing between several (two in this case) targets.

So in most of the animations the stop property of the animation 'cycle' is set to 1 (in T3) so that the 'cycle' animation stops and does not interfere with the currently triggered animation. (note that the 'cycle' animations 'clamp' property is set to 0 so that it loops when triggered.)

HTH,
Daimen

Hi

I'm new to morphing is there a tutorial where i can see how to code your morph animations between multiple targets?

The link above does not work.

Thanx

Hi Joe,

You might want to start with the "Exporting 3D Mesh Deformations" tutorial on our developer central website at:

http://developer.viewpoint.com/dc/resources1.shtml?tab=TOOL&sub=RSRC

Regards,
Viewpoint Support