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TUTORIAL9 This is absolutly my favorite feature in smartMorph and it was the main reason I've written this plugin. |
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 I built my ice block from simple cube by cutting it with a knife tool in that way to get...
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...a morph target with wide irregular gaps. smartMorphs allows very easily to animate those cracks. |
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The only thing you have to do is to paint a weightmap of propagation of your morph in the object. As you can see on the picture, in this case, there is painted with red where morphing should start (weightmap value 100%) and gray where it should finish (0%). Values in between indicate different time delays. You can also use negative weightmap values if you want to. That's all you need to do in Modeler. |
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Next load the object into Layout and apply smartMorph. Go to sequence tab and add two morph targets: <base> and your morph a few frames later. Because there is no default shape in smartMorph you have to add <base> if you want to start morphing from the original shape.
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The result is obvious now and look exactly like one obtained with morph mixer. All cracks appear simultaneously.
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Here is the trick :-). Just select any weightmap as time delay. Beneath you can set how many frames of delay you need. If you have morph in frame 20 and time delay set to 18 the object will be fully morphed in frame 38. In frame 20 only those parts that have full weightmap value are set.
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The result is an animated ice crack. Easy and simple to set up with smartMorph but quite hard to achieve without it. You can play with different weigtmaps and delays to see how it works and to get used to the idea of weightmap time delay. In smartMorph the same effect can be obtained in a few different ways. You can use effectors and animate them to make crack appear. You can also use animated texture mask in mixer to get similar effect. Time weightmap is very useful when there is a sequence of a few morphs (more than two). Than, with non-linear interpolation together, effects can be astonishing and very easy to achieve. Here is a final animation of cracking ice and a complete scene files |