From: pk-asdg@cup.portal.com (Perry S Kivolowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.graphics
Subject: Re: ASDG Morph effects in AmigaWorld
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 92 19:34:58 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world
  <bobl.71lm@bobsbox.rent.com>


Steve Davis asks:

>Well how do you determine the areas of the screen to morph? ...
>Do you use splines?

Many  of  the  morphing  systems  available  today use a mesh or grid based
approach  which  employs a linear or spline based interpolation scheme as a
back end. Most of these systems have exactly the same user interface.

All  I will divulge at this time is that MorphPlus does not share this user
interface.   Rather  it  uses  a different approach which apparently allows
morphs to be put together more precisely in less time.

>How about memory requirements?  

Nearly  all  of  the  effects  contained in MorphPlus have a dual precision
capability.  In the ``fast'' modes, less memory is used in general.  In the
``high quality'' modes, greater precision is computed (using more memory).

In the ``fast'' modes, MorphPlus has basically the same memory requirements
as  ADPRO.   In the ``high quality'' modes, as much as a few more megabytes
of RAM may be required.

There  should  be no problem doing highly precise morphs at broadcast video
sizes on an 8 megabyte Amiga.

>How many control points did you have? 

There  were about 150 user entered correspondence pairs in the morphs shown
in  the  (hasty)  ad.   However,  MorphPlus's  morphing  method  allows for
internally  synthesized correspondence pairs so that the actual number used
internally  can  be  much  higher  (and  you spend less time setting up the
correspondences).

>Your perspective effect is possibly the one simple tool most missed
>in ADPro.  A perspective composite loader for ADPRO would really
>give me a boner.  ;-)  Also, I look forward to the "swirl" effect
>that you used on the penny.  Are these effects anti-aliased?

Part  of  the division between the fast and high quality modes includes the
degree  of  antialiasing employed.  In the fast modes, very little is done.
In the high quality modes, everything is internally anti-aliased. 

The pennies shown in the ad were done before the anti-aliasing methods were
in place (ie:  done in fast mode).

>And what *OTHER* effects do you plan to have in it???

Some additional effects will be shown in next month's ad.

Bob Lindabury says:

>Good. I imagine we will be seeing a new add in the next 3 months then.

A new one next month, actually.

>I was very interested in the fact that there *was* movement in these
>morphs.  Morphing from one image to the next is fine but for any paying
>work, we must morph a sequence of video frames and this is something we
>are looking for at a reasonable cost.  Hopefully the interface to
>achieve this will be as good as the final output suggests.  

Morphing  of  moving  video is fully supported.

We  did  a  moving morph test for a Hollywood studio (during a visit to our
company)  which they said was on par with that which could be expected from
ILM or PDI. Except the moving morph we did, we did in a day.

>Future  ads  should  probably  show  at  least a single screen shot of the
>interface.

Remember  that  morphing is but one of the effects in MorphPlus.  As it is,
we  feel  we  can't  adequately convey the full power of the effects in the
space  of  a full page (and that's without showing the interface).  The GUI
will  undoubtedly be shown in the many articles which will be written about
the product.

>I guess that the new ideas gleaned at Siggraph will be incorporated into
>this first release?

While  we  did  pick  up some pointers from attending SIGGRAPH, much of the
product was already in place (this was very VERY gratifying).
Xref: sparky comp.sys.amiga.graphics:5692 comp.sys.amiga.advocacy:22075