8

Skin Mor ph M odif ier 807
themuscleshouldbelargestatframe150instead,
go to fr ame 150, choose the m or ph in the list b ox,
and then click Reset Orientation.
Remove Verts—Removes selected vertices from
the current morph, which deletes any animation
applied as part of the mor ph.
Use this command to save memory by removing
verticesnotpartofthemorphanimation.
Enabled—When on, the morph is active; when off,
the morph doesn’t appear in t he animation, and is
indicated in the list box with the text “Disabled.”
Default=on.
The ability to enable and disable each morph
individually lets you isolate the effect of each or
test them in combination.
Morph Name—Displays and lets you change the
name of the current morph.
Inf luence Angl e—Theanglearoundthebone’s
current orientation within which the morph takes
place. Default=90.0.
This is an important p arameter. Think of the
influence angle as a cone around the bone at
its orientation when you create the morph.
Consider an example in which Influence Angle
is set to the default value of 90.0 degrees. If the
bone starts its rotation beyond 45 degrees away
from the orientation at which the morph was
created,themorphhasnoeffectatthattime.
As the bone moves from 45 deg rees away to the
morph orientation, the morph increases to its full
value.Asthebonethenrotatesaway,themorph
gradually decreases until, at 45 degrees or more
away from the morph orientation, the morph no
longer appears.
Tip: Influence Angle is useful for isolating morphs;
that is, to prevent overlapping of different morphs
onthesamebone. Reducethevalueuntilone
morph’scontributionpercentvalue(showninthe
list box) falls off to 0.0 before the next one begins.
Fa lloff—Determinestherateofchangeofthe
morphasthebonemoveswithintheinfluence
angle. Use the drop-down list to choose one of
four different falloff types: Linear, Sinual, Fast, or
Slow. If you choose Custom Falloff, you can then
click the G (for Graph) button and edit the falloff
using standard curve-graph controls.
Note: Th e default graph, displayed when you first
access the falloff g raph, shows the Sinual falloff
type.
Joint Type—Determines how the modifier tracks
the angular motion of the bone. This is a per-bone
setting, not per-morph. Default=Ball Joint.
•
Ball Joint—Tracks all rot at ion of t he bon e. Use
this setting in most cases.
•
Planar Joint—Tracks rotation of the bone only
in the plane of its parent bone.
Ex ternal M esh—Lets you use a different mesh
as a mor ph ta rget. Click the button (default
label=-none-) and then select the target object.
Thetargetobjectshouldhavethesamemesh
structure as the Skin Morph object. After
specifying an external mesh, its name appears on
the button.
Using an external mesh ma kes it easier to set
up morph targets in a target mesh that uses a
reference pose, rather than the skinned, animated
mesh of which sections might be interpenetrating,
making it difficult to select the specific vertices to
be morphed. In this situation, it’s probably best to
turn Reload Only Selected Verts.
Note: The external-mesh connection is not live; if
youeditverticesintheexternalmesh,SkinMorph
doesn’t automatically recognize the changes.
To update the vertex positions after editing the
external mesh, use Reload Target (see followi ng).
Reload Target—Updates the Skin Morph object
with edited vertex positions f rom the external
mesh.