This is a quick and dirty program I wrote last year after we finished up with QuickTime 1.0 so that I could have some cool movies to use in presentations. It was used to make the award-winning QuickTime feature "Black and Blue" and now is available for you to make your own QuickTime morph movies. Since I don't have time to work on it, nor get paid to do so, it is provided as is, bugs and all, but it sometimes gives good results and is definitely worth the price.
Metamorphisis makes a QuickTime movie which is a 2-D morph between two still images. You can also use it to morph between the ending and starting frames of two QuickTime movies ( by first copying the frames as picts, making the morph movie and pasting it between the two movies )
How to use it:
Open a pict with the file menu. This is the starting image. Open another pict with the file menu. This is the ending image. The two picts should be of the same aspect ratio. The dimensions of the starting pict determine the dimensions of the result movie. If you have small pictures or if you want better results, use the "Oversample 2x" menu option, which does the calculation on double size image buffers ( it takes 4 times the memory, and is slower but you get better results ).
Metamorphisis is not smart enough to work by itself - you have to specify corresponding points on the two images. To do this, click on an identifying feature of one of the images. This makes a knob and connecting lines on both images. You can repeat this to define more points. The idea is to make the triangles formed by the connecting lines correlate in the two images as much as possible.
You can drag the knobs around on each image independently, so you can line them up on corresponding features. Add more knobs by clicking. Click on a knob to select it if you want to drag it somewhere else; the selected knob, and its partner on the other image are shown in red. If you make a new knob by accident, you can use Undo to get rid of it. Be careful to keep the knobs within the same bounding triangle in each image, or you'll get hosed up results. Picking good points is the secret to making good morphs - experimentation is recommended.
When you have your points defined, set the number of frames you want the morph to take in the Metamorphisis menu "Number of Stages" item. You can set the compression with the standard QuickTime compression dialog in the same menu. Then use the "Do Metamorphisis" item to make the morph movie.
That's it. Have fun.
- Mark Krueger ( krueger@apple.com / AppleLink: KRUEGER2 )
