We’ve been discussing Bezier Contexts over the last few days. As you recall, a Bezier Context is a PASeq action step that can store multiple sets of bezier paths as keyframes, and generate bezier movement when interpolating between 2 different keyframes. Today we’ll discuss how to use a Morph Context to generate image morph effect.
Studio Artist uses the positioning and movement of bezier paths over time to specify a morph between 2 different images. A Morph Context is a PASeq action step that can store a set of bezier paths and a reference to an image in a keyframe. An image morph is generated when a Morph Context interpolates between 2 different keyframes.
For today’s morphing example, we’re going to show how to use a Morph Context to morph between 2 different images, a woman’s face and a cat face. The effected image at the top of this post shows an intermediate frame position between 2 Morph Context keyframes. The first keyframe stores a reference to the woman’s face image, and the second keyframe stores a reference to a cat face image.
Both keyframes store a file pathname reference to the actual images, as well as a set of bezier paths that were hand drawn to anchor different facial features. The idea is to draw bezier paths around facial features, like the eyes, mouth, and face. These bezier paths are stored in the Morph Context keyframes along with the associated image file pathnames.
The end result of a morph effect could either be a static intermediate morphed image like the one at the top of this post, or a morph animation that transforms over time from one image to another. For this particular post example, we’ll just morph between 2 different images. However, you could follow the approach we’ll be discussing that allows you to build a morph effect using a Morph Context action step and use as many different images and associated keyframes as you wish.
The PASeq below shows what we want to generate. We want to end up building a one step PASeq that has a single Morph Context action step with 2 different keyframes. For the purpose of this demonstration I spaced the 2 keyframes 20 frames apart.