Morphing is the simplest facial method and good for new and advanced artists. Morphing takes vertex positions from duplicated models and blends them onto the selected morph model. By blending from multiple ‘reference’ models you can generate a number of expressions for the character while retaining flexibility on editing the original model. Morphs can be very effective to generate special facial affects like ‘lump on head’ for cartoon scenes as the head mesh can be happily manipulated with little issues. One interesting affect of morphs is that you can invert the morph % this can turn a blink into a stare or a smile into a sulk, as the morph inverts the vertex position. Some of these inverts will require limits so no distortions appear.

Pros

• Very flexible to manipulate the vertex’s
• Can add up to 100 different morphs
• Can manipulate UV mapping (for control model only)
  

Cons

• Cannot add or remove vertex’s to morph targets & control model (if you do this the vertex order for the morph targets will go out of place, or cannot be loaded into the morpher modifier)

• Takes up more memory than skinning

Morph process :

1. A control model is duplicated a number of times using reference copies. These reference copies will act as the ‘morph targets’.

The control model acts as the original model and should be modified if you want to modify all the morph models at the same time i.e. change shape of face, nose, eyes etc. This makes global modifications easy