Stephen Nichols wrote:
>  I was wondering if anyone knows if there is any software out there that
> would help me do some morphing with povray.  I'd like to be able to take
> two differant patches/meshes with the same number of points and do a
> morphing animation with them.  Has anyone created anything to do this
> yet?

JK wrote:
> Well, it's not 'software' as in a program, but I believe
> Chris Colefax, the unbelievable include file writer, is
> planning to do something with morphing. I'm not sure if he's
> finished (or even begun) yet, though.

Yes, POV-Ray morphing has indeed been suggested to me (like so many
other things!), and with the release of POV-Ray 3.1 and the Compressed
Mesh Macro File morphing between two meshes becomes all the more
feasible.  The array method described by Thorsten obviously takes care
of a major part of the process, and the average pattern should have no
trouble handling the blended textures.

What does present a problem, however, is dealing with meshes or patch
models with different numbers of vertices - some form of surface
interpolation is called for, so a single vertex can be split into
multiple vertices, or vice-versa.  Perhaps it would be easiest to
"equalise" the vertices in each mesh before any morphing takes place;
combining this with a reordering of the vertices would allow for all
sorts of effects, such as the model twisting or flipping as it changed
shape.

A little more ambitiously (or foolishly, perhaps!), I have been
considering morphing techniques that can be applied to any and all
POV-Ray objects.  At the moment I am leaning towards some form of
blob interpolation, which would allow smooth blending between different
shapes, and other effects such as objects melting into puddles, merging,
evaporating, etc.  The biggest obstacle I can foresee is how to
represent various objects in blob form - some are obvious, but others
may require a little more effort (I'm working on it!).

That aside, if anyone (and Stephen in particular) has two suitable
models that they want to morph (ie. meshes or patches with equal numbers
of vertices), just email me with some more details on the sort of
results you'd like to see and I'll be happy to start looking into it...

Post a reply to this message