Multiple morphings of a vertex model

smichael_6ca4e40f89

I'm wondering if this can be done: I created a vertex sphere and using morph area/morph target, morphed the sphere into a cylinder. Further down the timeline, I want to further morph the vertex cylinder by opening up the cylinder into a plane. If I try to add more areas and targets, it just adds to the original vertex sphere and doesn't allow me to add a separate morph area/target independent of the first morph. I can understand because I'm just adding more morph areas/targets to the original sphere. What I'm trying to do here is take a vertex sphere (done), add a correct texture map of earth to the sphere (done), then morph the sphere into a cylinder to show how the map becomes distorted (done). I then want to morph the cylinder into a flat plane to get a final flat distorted map. Using the morph technique is a faster way of creating what I want. I guess I could do this whole workflow the hard way by using key frames. Is it even possible to have two different morph areas/morph targets for the same vertex object? Thanks.

McGuiver

Make your entire sphere a morph area, then you can create several morph targets
IE:
Cylinder Morph target
Disc Morph target

You can add many targets to do different morphs to the same area.

To add a target to your sphere in the vertex modeler go to the morph tab,
click on the little button on the right of the current area list, and create another target.

Note: when you edit a morph target, make sure your other targets are zeroed, otherwise it will give unexpected results.

smichael_6ca4e40f89

Thanks McGuiver. I'll give it a try and let you know how it went. :)

smichael_6ca4e40f89

McGuiver: this worked well to a point. I first had to make a small hole in the top and bottom of the sphere so I could work with individual vertices at the top and bottom instead of just one vertex at the apex. I then highlighted a set of polygons from the top of the sphere down to the equator of the sphere and made that an area (trying to do the whole top hemisphere at one time was visually impossible). I then made a target and morphed this arc area out to a cylinder (I have a cylinder the same size and segments as the sphere to use as a template for where to move the sphere vertices to). This morph occurs over 1 to 4 seconds on the timeline.

The next step was purely experimental so that I could understand how to move these morphed vertices to the end of the next morph. With the scrubber set back to zero on the timeline, I created a second target for this area. Went into Edit and moved just the two top vertices to a distance past the top of the cylinder position. Validated that, turned on the animation mode, moved the scrubber to 8 seconds on the timeline, and moved the animation scrubber in the second target to 1. I then scrubbed back and forth on the timeline and noticed that the second morph was moving with the first morph from their original locations at the top of the sphere. I needed to have the second morph start at 4 seconds on the timeline. In the animation mode, I moved the timeline scrubber back to 4 seconds and set the target animation to zero on the second morph target and, bazinga, the second morph didn't start until 4 seconds on the timeline and moved out to the new timeline position at 8 seconds.

So now I will go back and attempt to do a second morph on the morphed sphere to cylinder and morph the cylinder into a flat plane. Thanks again for all your help!