Endomorph Instructions

 

Endomorphing is a capability of LightWave to smoothly change a shape into any other shape. It can be used to animate facial expressions, for example. To use this capability, you set up several “morph maps” with your object, which are alternate shape modifications. For example, you might set up one for a blink, one for raising the eyebrows, one for each of the various speech sounds that can be produced, etc.  Then you can morph between the various shapes by adjusting sliders on the screen.

 

To set up an object for endomorphing, follow these steps.

 

  1. Open the head model in Modeler (v. 7.5 for these instructions.)
  2. Click the M button near the lower right corner of the screen to turn on morph mapping.
  3. Click in the box in the lower right corner of the screen that says “(base)” and choose “(new)”. Give it a name such as Mouth.Open.  The first part of the name is the morph map group and the second part is the name of the slider within that group.  There should be no space in the name, and there should be a dot separating the parts of the name.
  4. Arrange the model so that the mouth is open.
  5. Create several other morph maps, such as Mouth.Closed, Eyes.Closed, Eyes.Left, Eyes.Right, Mouth.a, Mouth.e, Mouth.o, etc.
  6. Save the object, and send it to Layout (or open it in Layout).
  7. With the object selected, open the Item Properties window (p).
  8. Click the Deformation tab.
  9. Click the Add Displacement dropbox and select Morph Mixer.
  10. Double-click the morph mixer line that appears below the dropbox.
  11. Close the Object Properties window.
  12. Fiddle with the Morph Mixer sliders. Keyframe positions as desired.
  13. Create a brief animation (e.g. 60 frames) of your head making facial expressions. If possible, render as a quicktime movie and email to me. If you are using an older version of lightwave, just send me the object and scene files.

 

A more in-depth tutorial is available on facial setup if desired.

 

Some objects in the Lightwave Content directory are already set up with EndoMorph maps for you to experiment with: for example, Talking Dog and StuHead_withEndoMorphs in the objects/characters directory. Open at least one of these models and experiment with the morph mixer.