Simple Morph Problem

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Here’s a simple AE morph description that I posted a while back on this forum:
Use Mesh Warp.
Set 2 layers in a AE comp- the “morph from” layer on top of the “morph to” layer.
Start on the layer you want to morph from- apply Mesh Warp and set keyframe. Move 8 to 15 frames (or as many as you need your morph to be) and change transparency to 50% so that you can see the layer under. Use the mesh warp to distort the features of the top layer to match those of the bottom layer ( eyes to match the eyes, mouth to mouth and so on..).
Apply Mesh Warp to bottom layer and set keyframe at the end of the transition. Go back to the beginning of the transition and use the Mesh Warp to distort the bottom layer to match the top one’s features.
Set transparency keyframes to animate the top layers opacity from 100% to 0 for the length of the morph.
That’s basically it.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Paul Anthony]

Hi Ted — thanks for posting, but I’m not morphing faces; I’m morphing words, the outlines of words need to re-shape themselves into each other. Any reason why it doesn’t work correctly?

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

The principle of the morph I described is valid for any shapes, whether faces or words. I have used this method numerous times and have gotten great results.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Paul Anthony]

Understood, but I’m not interested in manually moving points and especially not having a layer “fade out”. I need the outlines of the letters to stay perfectly sharp through the morph, as if they were melting and reforming themselves into a new word. Thanks for any help.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

All morphing algorithms employ fade-in/fade-out techniques. The trick is to mask the fade transition. Other than Eran’s tutorial and Ted’s recipe, do take a look at Chris Zwar’s Morphing COW Tutorial on using the Reshape effect.

Additionally, someone posted on a similar issue as yours about a month ago. A COW search will be another productive endeavor for you.

HTH
RoRK

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[Mato Kokotic]

What he wants to do is, actually “tweening” of sort.
Maybe import words from Illustrator as masks on solid and keyframe paths?
Obviously require some manual work but results would be what he actually needs.

[Yuval Hoshen]

I did the same exercise a couple of weeks ago and followed Eran Stern’s tutorial with the paint strokes. You have to make sure the different shapes are pasted as paint strokes on the same brush and keyframe them on the brush path, that way the interpolation between the different shapes will happen.

[Paul Anthony]

Thank you thank you for all the suggestions. As people are starting to mention “tweens” and creating vector paths it’s making me think maybe I’m better off doing this in Flash?

[Yuval Hoshen]

I’m attaching a link to the AE file that I created following Eran Stern’s Tutorial. You can check the Morph comp to see where yours went wrong.

2192_morph.aep.zip

[Paul Anthony]

Thanks for posting Yuval — I’m actually still on AE CS4 so I’m unable to open this. I’m trying this in Flash which is OK, but I feel like I could get something more organic in After Effects?