Morph Target Community Proposal
This page is to contain the overall community proposal for "Morph Targets".
Please do not add to this page without authorization from a co-chair or a co-chair's assistant from the Content Creation Improvement User Group first. Please discuss any relevant points in the discussion tab in the wiki.
What is a Morph Target?
A morph target, also known as a blend shape, or a shape key in some 3D applications, is a special kind of "vertex map" containing the positions of vertices in relation to their original position on a mesh. They are relatively easy to work with, only requiring the content creator to "sculpt" or otherwise move the vertices on their meshes to the positions they'd like for a morph target.
Most 3D applications support authoring morph targets, such as Luxology Modo, Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, and Blender. The Collada file format also supports morph targets.
What are they used for?
Most modern video games use morph targets for complex animations that would otherwise be hard to accomplish with skeletal animation, such as facial animation, and even things like character customization. The viewer its self actually uses morph targets to enable avatar customization as-is.
A a small list of examples of what they could be used for in the context of Second Life include:
- Complex facial animations on rigged meshes
- Additional ways for a user to customize the appearance of their avatar
- Animating the surface of a prim without the need to use a custom skeleton
- Fine grained control for content creators over how their clothing deforms
Advantages of Morph Targets
Morph targets would enable greater control over how a clothing item would "fit" on an avatar. Tools already exist that allow content creators to check the fit of their clothing using rigged meshes using existing rigging techniques, and with morph targets, not only will they be able to use existing rigging techniques, but they'll have an even easier and more customizable solution to allow them to create a much broader range of clothing that fits avatars in far more realistic ways.
Testing these morph targets would be a somewhat trivial process, and could be done directly in whatever 3D application the content creator uses. No additional tools would be needed to make morph targets work for content creators; they already exist, and have for several years!
They can also operate faster than the upcoming "Mesh Deformer" by Qarl Fizz. No setup is required beforehand for a morph target to work, meaning no additional thread is required to calculate morph target values and weights. They can be directly applied to a mesh at any time, and generally with a minimal number of instructions. There's also the possibility of using them with GPU hardware acceleration as well.