Morphing
Encyclopedia
Special effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
in motion pictures
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
s that changes (or morphs) one image
Image
An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
into another through a seamless transition. Most often it is used to depict one person turning into another through technological means or as part of a fantasy or surreal sequence. Traditionally such a depiction would be achieved through cross-fading techniques on film. Since the early 1990s, this has been replaced by computer software to create more realistic transitions.
Early examples of morphing
Though the 1986 movie The Golden ChildThe Golden Child
The Golden Child is a 1986 American comedy film starring Eddie Murphy. Murphy plays Chandler Jarrell, a social worker who is confronted by a young Asian woman , who tells him that he is The Chosen One destined to save The Golden Child, the savior of all mankind, from the clutches of the demon Sardo...
implemented very crude morphing effects from animal to human and back, the first movie to employ detailed morphing was Willow
Willow (film)
Willow is a 1988 American fantasy film directed by Ron Howard and produced/co-written by George Lucas. Warwick Davis stars in the film, as well as Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley, Jean Marsh, and Patricia Hayes...
, in 1988. A similar process was used a year later in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a 1989 American adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas. It is the third film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford reprises the title role and Sean Connery plays Indiana's father, Henry...
to create Walter Donovan's gruesome demise. Both effects were created by Industrial Light and Magic
Industrial Light and Magic
Industrial Light & Magic is an Academy Award-winning motion picture visual effects company that was founded in May 1975 by George Lucas and is owned by Lucasfilm. Lucas created the company when he discovered that the special effects department at 20th Century Fox was shut down after he was given...
using grid warping
Image warping
Image warping is the process of digitally manipulating an image such that any shapes portrayed in the image have been significantly distorted. Warping may be used for correcting image distortion as well as for creative purposes...
techniques developed by Tom Brigham and Doug Smythe (AMPAS).
In 1985, Godley and Creme created a primitive "morph" effect using analogue cross-fades in the video for "Cry
Cry (Godley & Creme song)
"Cry" is a song released by the British music duo Godley & Creme in 1985. It was included on the duo's album The History Mix Volume 1.The song peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming Godley & Creme's lone Top 40 hit in the US apart from their former band, 10cc...
". The cover for Queen
Queen (band)
Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...
's 1989 album The Miracle featured the technique to morph the four band members' faces into one gestalt image. In 1991, morphing appeared notably in the Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
music video Black Or White and in the movies Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr.. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, and Edward Furlong...
and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is the sixth feature film in the Star Trek science fiction franchise and is the last of the Star Trek films to include the entire main cast of the 1960s Star Trek television series. Released in 1991 by Paramount Pictures, it was directed by Nicholas Meyer and...
. The first application for personal computers to offer morphing was Gryphon Software Morph
Gryphon Software Morph
-Morph:Gryphon Software's Morph was the first commercially available morphing software program for personal computers. Gryphon Software was founded in 1991 by Duane Maxwell, Bridget K...
on the Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
. Other early morphing systems included ImageMaster, MorphPlus and CineMorph, all of which premiered for the Commodore Amiga in 1992. Other programs became widely available within a year, and for a time the effect became common to the point of cliché
Cliché
A cliché or cliche is an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel. In phraseology, the term has taken on a more technical meaning,...
. For high-end use, Elastic Reality (based on MorphPlus) saw its first feature film use in In The Line of Fire (1993) and was used in Quantum Leap (work performed by the Post Group). At VisionArt
VisionArt
"VisionArt Design & Animation'" was a motion picture and television visual effects company, founded in the 1980s by David Rose and Todd Hess. Though originally a small Orange County company working primarily on cable TV advertisements and flying logos, VisionArt moved to Santa Monica in 1992,...
Ted Fay used Elastic Reality to morph Odo for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe...
. Elastic Reality was later purchased by Avid
AVID
AVID stands for:* Advancement Via Individual Determination, a college-readiness system designed to increase the number of students who enroll in four-year colleges in the U.S....
, having already become the de facto system of choice, used in many hundreds of films. The technology behind Elastic Reality earned two Academy Awards in 1996 for Scientific and Technical Achievement going to Garth Dickie and Perry Kivolowitz. The effect is technically called a "spatially-warped cross-dissolve". The first social network designed for user-generated morph examples to be posted online was Galleries by Morpheus (morphing software)
Morpheus (morphing software)
Morpheus Photo Animation Suite is a suite of morphing and digital compositing computer software for Windows and Mac. The software suite contains Morpheus Photo Morpher, Morpheus Photo Warper and Morpheus Photo Mixer, although these three are also available individually.The latest version is 3.16...
.
In Taiwan, Aderans, a hair loss solutions provider, did a TV commercial featuring a morphing sequence in which people with lush, thick hair morph into one another, reminiscent of the end sequence of the Black or White video.
Modern morphing techniques
In the early 1990s computer techniques that often produced more convincing results began to be widely used. These involved distorting one image at the same time that it faded into another through marking corresponding points and vectors on the "before" and "after" images used in the morph. For example, one would morph one face into another by marking key points on the first face, such as the contour of the nose or location of an eye, and mark where these same points existed on the second face. The computer would then distort the first face to have the shape of the second face at the same time that it faded the two faces.Later, more sophisticated cross-fading techniques were employed that vignetted different parts of one image to the other gradually instead of transitioning the entire image at once. This style of morphing was perhaps most famously employed in the video that former 10cc
10cc
10cc are an English art rock band who achieved their greatest commercial success in the 1970s. The band initially consisted of four musicians -- Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme -- who had written and recorded together for some three years, before assuming the "10cc" name...
members Kevin Godley
Kevin Godley
Kevin Godley is a British musician and music video director.He was born in a family of Jewish descent, and went to North Cestrian Grammar School in Altrincham....
and Lol Creme
Lol Crème
Lol Creme is an English musician and music video director, best known for his work in 10cc. He sings, plays guitar and keyboards.-Biography:...
(performing as Godley & Creme
Godley & Creme
Godley & Creme were an English pop music duo composed of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. The pair began releasing albums as a duo after splitting from the pop band 10cc. In 1979 they directed their first music video for their own single "An Englishman in New York"...
) produced in 1985 for their song Cry
Cry (Godley & Creme song)
"Cry" is a song released by the British music duo Godley & Creme in 1985. It was included on the duo's album The History Mix Volume 1.The song peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming Godley & Creme's lone Top 40 hit in the US apart from their former band, 10cc...
. It comprised a series of black and white close-up shots of faces of many different people that gradually faded from one to the next. In a strict sense, this had little to do with modern-day computer generated morphing effects, since it was merely a dissolve
Dissolve (film)
In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a dissolve is a gradual transition from one image to another. The terms fade-out and fade-in and are used to describe a transition to and from a blank image. This is in contrast to a cut where there is no such transition. A dissolve...
using fully analog equipment.
Morphing in the future
Morphing algorithms continue to advance today and many programs can automatically morph images that correspond closely enough with relatively little instruction from the user. This has led to the use of morphing techniques to create convincing slow-motion effects where none existed in the original film or video footage by morphing between each individual frame using optical flowOptical flow
Optical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and the scene. The concept of optical flow was first studied in the 1940s and ultimately published by American psychologist James J....
technology. Morphing has also appeared as a transition technique between one scene and another in television shows, even if the contents of the two images are entirely unrelated. The algorithm in this case attempts to find corresponding points between the images and distort one into the other as they crossfade. In effect morphing has replaced the use of crossfading as a transition in some television shows, though crossfading was originally used to produce morphing effects.
Morphing is used far more heavily today than ever before. In years past, effects were obvious, which led to their overuse. Now, morphing effects are most often designed to be seamless and invisible to the eye.