odf opened this issue on Oct 27, 2008 · 13933 posts
JB123 posted Tue, 31 March 2009 at 1:10 AM
Quote - Oh cool! JB123, I have been wondering how a person might go about making modular morphs like that, that would play well together. Any chance on a follow along? How do you get them to blend well with eachother?
Well it is alot of back and forth that's for sure. It's not an easy thing to pull off and Im really just learning how to do it. I have seen the idea talked about on a few CG forums many years ago and theres a guy on zbrush central that did a set of individual eyes,noses and lips that was really cool. If you've been there you've probably seen it.
Back when P6 first came out I tried making modular morphs with magnets for james that mixed well but I failed badly. I always wanted a figure that could mix morphs and even reverse well but nothing existed until Apollo came out. I have to say Anton is a master of this technique and I have no clue how he does his.
So lately I have learned blender a bit and practice sculpting fairly often. blah blah blah get to the point right. Lol. How is it done? For lack of a better word I wing it. Here are a few things I do and I assure you it's nothing special.
I put some thought into each morph before I make it.
I try not to detail the hell out of it if it's meant to work with other morphs
I use locked axis morphing alot. I try avoiding things like rotation that can create pinching especially on areas that already have creases or tightly spaced geometry. When using scultpting brushes I use the grab tool mostly and if I have to smooth things I use a very low setting and make several passes. I try to avoid smoothing because it a can really affect other morphs if it smooths to much but on another morph I used less smoothing. Which is the main reason why I like the grab brush ( especially with locked axis ). almost exclusively. It's more work but much more precise.
I use keyshapes in blender. There is a slider that you can adjust positive and negative values so you can easily see how good or bad it looks at high pos and neg values. You can use the timeline to blend them together to check what works good and what needs to be refined. When I have a morph that works good ( enough ) at 1.5 and -1.5. I then export the morph at 0.750. That way the morph is more subtle but has a greater range. I don't always do this but it helps alot sometimes. Sometimes I have to go into edit mode and adjust things vertex by vertex. Sometimes it just doesn't work and I start over from scratch...sometimes theres not enough time in the day and I give up and try another day. Lol.
So thats it nothing special. Just alot of tweak,test, fix,rinse and repeat.