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                INFO
Title       : VMorph v2b
Author      : Lee Wilkie
Country     : England
Conditions  : Public Domain
Category    : Application
Released    : 1993
Opinion     : 87%
            REQUIREMENTS
Drives      : 1
Memory      : 1 meg.
            COMPATIBILITY
A500 wb 1.3.2 : YES
A600 wb 2.05  : YES%Multi-tasks   : NO - Autoboots Only -
   (written in AMOS - weep!)
Display       : PAL&   Morphing  and  Warping comes to the&public  domain  with  a program that's&extremely  easy  to  use  and produces&superb  results.  The  cat sequence on&the  front  page  is  an  example of a&morph produced with this program while&the  one  on  the  following page is a
warp.&   VMorph  when  first run throws up a&requester asking for the start and end&pictures  to morph between. These have&to be sixteen colour grey-scale lo-res&IFF  images.  No  colour  support  I'm&afraid.  The two images I used for the&cat-morphs  started  out as colour HAM&pictures  taken from the Cat Slideshow&reviewed  in  issue  2  of APDR. These&were first reduced to lo-res using the&PD program Wasp. I then converted them&into  grey-scale  pictures  in  Deluxe&Paint  by making a grey-scale palette,&(spreading  all  the  colours  in  the&palette  from black to white), loading&the  pictures  in   as   brushes   and
re-mapping them.&   Once  your  two pictures are loaded&you  are  presented  with  your  first&picture  displayed  on  the screen and&covered  with  a  few  horizontal  and&vertical  white  lines  and  a control&panel at the bottom of the screen. The&control  panel is nicely laid out with&everything  controllable by the mouse.&It  partially  covers your picture but&can  be  toggled on or off by pressing&the space bar. Your second picture can&be  viewed just by pressing the return
key and it also has lines on.&   The  horizontal  and vertical lines&covering the pictures are at the heart&of  the  morphing and warping process.&The  points where these lines meet can&be moved about with the mouse to allow&you  to  enclose matching areas of the&two  pictures.  If  for  example   you&needed  a  small  eye  on  your  first&picture  to  grow  into a large eye on&your  second picture you would enclose&both  eyes  with  the  matching set of&points  but  they  would   be   spaced&further  apart on the second eye. Rest&assured  it's  easier   to   do   than
explain.&   Extra  lines  may   be   added   by&clicking  on  the  left  or top of the&screen  and  they  are  then placed on&both screens. Editing is fast and very&easy  and  really  can't  be  faulted.&There's  no  way  to  delete lines but&this  doesn't  seem   to   cause   any&problems as any extra lines don't slow&the  rendering  process  down  and are&placed  very  neatly when first drawn.&It's  all  very slick and enjoyable to&use,  once  you've  figured  out  what&you're doing, which doesn't take long.&   Once you're happy with where you've&placed all the lines It's time to make&your  animation.  You have a choice of&how  many frames you want to use and a&selection of sizes to choose from with&a  full  screen animation taking about&an  hour  per  frame. So for most full&screen  animations  it's  at  least an&over-night wait. The results I'm happy&to  say  have  proved  marvellous with&both  the  morphing  and  warping.   I&wanted  to include an animation in the&magazine  but  it  would have taken up&too  much  disk space. Subscribers can
see one on their extra PD disk.
[3m!     The results I'm happy to say#   have proved marvellous with both       the morphing and warping. 
[23m&   There's  one major problem here and&it's  to do both with AMOS and VMorph.&With  VMorph you can't save how you've&set  things up so everything has to be&done   in   one   sitting.   If   AMOS&multi-tasked  (which  it  doesn't) you&could  at  least try your animation to&see  if the results were as you wanted&them  before  exiting VMorph. As it is&it's  a case of saving your animation,&exiting  VMorph   (and   losing   your&set-up),  making  your  animation with&AnimBuild  which  is  also supplied on&the  disk  and  finally  viewing  your&morph  or  warp.  I  can  forgive  the&programmer  for  using  AMOS but I can&never  forgive  the  maker of AMOS for&leaving  out  access to the Workbench.&Grrr! AMOS aside though, VMorph's lack&of a set-up save is a major oversight.&Perhaps  with the next version when it&goes colour and is in all resolutions?
Well one can hope.&   With  warping  I found that loading&the  source  picture as both the start&and  end  pictures  made  it easier to&visualize  how  you wanted to warp the&picture.  Once  you  know  what you're&doing  warping  is  just  as  easy  as&morphing.  This  is  one program where&using  it is the quickest way to learn&which  is  just   as   well   as   the
documentation is rather sparse.&   VMorph is a stunning debut for what&I  think  is  the first Amiga morphing&program  to  hit the public domain. If&you  want  some  new  effects for your&pictures or anims then you must add it&to  your  graphics  collection.  Now I&wonder how much it was Michael Jackson$paid for that Black And White video?
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