Research Project: Object Metamorphosis and Transformations
Fani Vassiadi
MA Digital Effects
NCCA, Bournemouth University
| Introduction | The theory | The practice | My approach | Conclusion | References |
How everything started
The very first form of morphing was simply a cross-dissolve transition, in order to fade one picture into another. An example of using this transition was to create a metamorphosis effect in 1941 in the horror movie The Wolf Man. In the 70’s Julian Gomez developed a “tweening” program at Ohio State as well as Jim Blinn and Martin Newell published a key paper on texture mapping. In 1988, after Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith published a seminar paper on computing efficient geometric transformations, things started to change. (The film Willow, was released and a program called Morf was developed by Douglas Smythe and others at ILM in order to handle the transformation of a goat turning into a human form. (P.D.Netzley)
Pic1, pic2 (Technicians Jeff Wilkins and Gordon Tate work on an ostrich puppet with a peacock's tale as part of Fin Raziel's transformation from creature to human. Each shot is digitized into the computer where they will be blended together to form a seamless image.) http://www.vkn.com/movies/willow/veffects1.html
The same year ILM demonstrates in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a 2D morphing of blending a series of three gradually grotesque masks depicting the villain’s face as he died. At that period, George Wolberg wrote Digital Image Warping (IEEE Computer Society Press, 1990), the definitive compendium of 2D image warping techniques. Tom Brigham and Paul Heckbert had already developed some interesting image-transformation sequences at NYIT’s Computer Graphics Lab. However, the interest in morphing grows even more in 1990 with Michael Jackson’s video clip Black or White. A sequence of morphing different faces occurs with great success, while, the film The Abyss presents an alien water creature that transformed its face to match various humans. A year later Terminator II make extensive use of morphing technique as an invincible killing machine flowing into different shapes (liquid metal man, the actor Robert Patrick, the actress Linda Hamilton, and a shapeless blob).
Without doubt, 1991 proved to be a very creative year as regards to morphing for ILM, while also in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country another 2D morphing was displayed. In this film, a body shape changer was taking different forms including an adult female, a young girl, a monster and Captain Kirk. The difference in sizes between the actors increased the complication of morphing, as extreme warps between images were required. In 1992, Death Becomes Her, used morphing to blur the actress Meryl Streep's hand from old to young and Lawnmower Man illustrates at some point a strange morphing when the two lovers become liquid metal, melding with one another and transforming into metallic insects flying across the computer-generated terrain. (http://www.tiscali.co.uk/
All these films mentioned above as well as many other advertisements, consisted the upraise of morphing in the industry. The first application for personal computers to offer morphing was ImageMaster for the Amiga (which was later renamed WinImages when it was ported to Windows) in 1992. (wikipedia) It is worth mentioning here that today almost all compositing and 3d softwares include a section for morphing which confirms the fact that morphing is becoming even more popular.