5D.Morpheus

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Hints and Tips

DIGITISING
Which clip should I start work on?
Experience will help you here! But start with the simpler one as in the Square to Circle exercise. Always start as simply as possible, gradually building up the features as you go.

Which frame shall I start with?
The one in the middle of the morph. This is the most critical area. Do lots of work here to perfect the effect. The start and end will, of course, be themselves!

I cannot see the curves, they are pink on pink!
Change the color with the color wheel and the Src/Dst controls.

How do I start a new line?
Click on the new curve button.

How do I stop digitising?
Click on the edit curve button.

CURVE FEATURES
I have lots of curves! How do I know which S curve goes with which D curve?
The co-responding curve is drawn more brightly than the others. When you select a curve by clicking on it, several things happen:

Do I have to have the same number of points in both the S and the D curves?
No. It is quite legal to have 15 points in the S curve and only 2 in the D curve. But Beware! when you start deleting points in a curve, if you reach less than 2 points in the curve, then both curves will disappear. Though the number of points does not have to match between S and D, there must always be the same number of S curves as there are D curves.

Points keep re-appearing in curves where I know I deleted them!
If you delete points in a curve for one key frame, but not for all, Morpheus may re-insert points when it comes to process. It only does it when it really has to, to keep continuity. The points are always added along the desired curve. The point count can go down between frames, but not up! try this to see what happens:

The point count will remain as requested. But have a look at the frame prior to key 2. It will have 20 points in it! Compare this to: Move between the keys. Key 2 gets 15 points again. That is life!

EDITING
I cannot select the curve I want to edit!
Are you looking at the right set? To pick a source line, you must look at the s lines to select it.

I cannot find my handles!
This usually happens after you have set the handles for the point in question to 'linear' using the tool. The handle lengths are set to near 0.0. you have to press hard to get hold of them with a pen, or use the right mouse button.

Should I make closed shapes?
You DON'T need to completely enclose a shape, for instance, someone's eye or mouth, a simple line above and/or below will suffice. In general, it is best to use lines that are roughly convex. Lines which have lots of ins and outs are legal, and will work, but may not give the best results. Just dividing up your outlines into separate convex lines helps a lot.

PREVIEWING
How can I compare the result with the original?
After previewing a frame, toggle between the result and the s-imageo or d-image. Occasionally this will not work first time - just re-process the frame and try again.

WEIRD MORPHS
Something odd is happening, the wrong bits are going to the wrong place.
If you want to 'examine' the morphing process to track down such anomalies, try this:

This is the green 'interpolation' line with arrows, which represents the state of the morph interpolation at the current frame. It allows you to see how the s-lines map to the d-lines or how Morpheus thinks.
The distribution of the points on the lines is quite critical. Morpheus tries very hard to evenly distribute the interpolation points (green arrows) between the source and destination lines. If it does not do it as you would prefer, say the ear in the source ends up as the chin in the destination, cut up the line into more selective chunks.
If the arrows are 'bunched' very close together, or change direction suddenly, then this indicates there could be a problem around this area. Again you can try using the 'cutter' technique on these points to sort out the interpolation.

MORPHEUS KEY FRAMES
What is a Morpheus key frame?
Morpheus keys are not like the Jaleo animation keys. They are the set of lines at a specific Work Frame. You will know when you have got a Morpheus key frame by the symbol on the toolbar. There is no 'Anim' curve associated with Morpheus keys.

How do make a key frame?
The minute you add a line or edit a line in any way, you should save a key frame for the current work frame.

How many key frames do I need?
I you start with one in the middle(ish) and then one at either end, you will get the natural interpolation between them. Scrubbing through the sequence you will then see where things go out of alignment and can start to add keys at the extremes of these movements.

SAVING THE CURVES
Where has all my work gone?
Did you save your design file? If you didn't you will have to start again.

It works fine when I scrub up and down BUT when I render nothing happens!
SAVE your design file immediatley prior to rendering. The rendering is a separate task which reads your design information from disk. Unfortunately the Morpheus private data ( all your hard work!) cannot be automatically passed to the rendering.

RENDERING
Is the rendering multiprocessed?
Yes The rendering code makes full use of multiprocessing on Octanes.

What can I do with a map only option?
When on, the rendered frame is the mixing matte; derived from the rate of mix between the various groups. If you only have 1 group then the image will be a uniform grey. With several groups with differing rates of mix, you will see how the various regions relate.

Most of the morph is fine, but one bit I just cannot fix!
Add the troublesome curves to a separate group and try changing the rate of crossfade.

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