RE:Flex Tutorial File: Motion Morph

This project has 1 composition that demonstrates how to accomplish a moving morph using RE:Flex Motion Morph. RE:Flex Morph can only morph from still image to still image, so RE:Flex Motion Morph is the tool for this job.

1) Motion Morph This composition creates a motion morph between the two movies. By animating the Global Warp % and Global Blend % from 0 to 100% over the course of the sequence, the Pete footage starts out in the Pete shape, and slowly warps towards the Richard shape while slowly dissolving from the warped Pete sequence into the warped Richard sequence (and vice-versa).... while moving!

To notice and do:

- There are two sets of geometries, in pairs: the yellow Pete features and the green Richard features. The Pete features were drawn with Display set to UNWarped "From" and the Richard features were drawn with Display set to UNWarped "To"
- Render the animation with Display set to Warped "From" in order to see how the Pete footage has been warped. Do the same with Display set to Warped "To" to view the warped Richard sequence.
- Richard's hairline touches the edge of the frame. In order to match Richard's hair to Pete's hair, the edge of the Richard image does not stick to the edge of the frame. To get a better result we have checked Smart Blend. Uncheck Smart Blend and notice the unsatisfactory blend in the areas where the Richard image comes away from the edge. The other option to try and fix this is to click "Hold Edges"... but this will cause Richard's hair to streak to the edge... also unwanted. As such, checking Smart Blend gives the best result.
- We have not paid much attention to aligning the ear on the right. To help clean up the double exposure, we have checked Auto Align. This helps clean up the ear edge (however, it doesn't complete clean up the double exposure, because our hand-drawn features at the ear and hairline tell RE:Flex to stretch the ear in a way that does not match up, even with Auto Align checked). To do: uncheck Auto Align and view the resulting animation.
- Check the "Auto Hide/Show Splines" checkbox. Put the plugins' display mode into "Unwarped "From".. notice that only the "from" splines are shown. Conversely, when the display mode is 'Unwarped "To"', only the "to" splines are shown.

2) Motion Morph, PerSpline Color

In this composition we've dissolved Richard's hair in completely by frame 4.

To notice and do:

- The Use Global Color Amount for the TopHairline and RightEar has been turned off.
- As such, the Color Amt for each "from" spline pairs for the TopHairline and RightEar has been animated. Each spline has a key of the Color Amt set to 0 at frame 0, and a key set to value 100 at frame 4.
- Render the animation with Display set to Control Image to view the feature line animation used for the warping at each frame.

3) Motion Morph, PerSpline Warp

In this composition we've animated the hair into the "to" shape by frame 4, instead of moving into shape over the whole animation.To notice and do:

- The Use Global Shape Amount for the TopHairline and RightEar has been turned off.
- As such, the ShapeAmt for each "from" spline has been animated. Eachspline has a key of the ShapeAmt set to 0 at frame 0, and a key set to value 100 at frame 4. This causes the shape of the morph to transition faster for the hairline and right ear.
- Render the animation with Display set to Control Image to view the amount of blending used for the morph at each frame.

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