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morphing?

2001 Productions

2001 Productions

Hey gang, I've just finished picture cut on my latest feature and am moving into effects. I have a couple of shots where, essentially, the head of one character changes into another and back again.

What I did was shoot a master plate of one character on the set delivering dialogue. I then shot the second character in close-up in front of a green screen delivering the exact same lines.

I lip-synced the green-screen shots with the master audio, then keyed out the green and lined up the second head over the master body.

I now have two identical shots with identical audio, except the speaker's head is different in each. What I want to do is transition live from one to the other as they are speaking. I tried a simple cross dissolve, but it just looks like what it is: a dissolve. I thought about morphing, but don't have that capability.

My questions are:

1. Is morphing the best option, AND will it work with the lip movement happening in the shot? If so, is there a good, relatively inexpensive software solution (Shake costs a small fortune and I only need it for 2 shots) I can pick up to do this? Or,

2. Does anyone have a better idea than morphing, which, admittedly, has been overused and become a little trite.

My footage is HD 24p, edited with Final Cut Studio 2. (I may be upgrading to FCS3 soon, if it makes any difference.

Thanks in advance!
 
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I see you're not too keen on morphing, but throwin' this tutorial your way anyway.


Linkage


It's done in After Effects. I dunno how that compares to Shake in price. Maybe you already have it.


Good luck. :)

.
 
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Steve, thanks for the link! That isn't quite what I'm trying to do with these particular shots, but that technique is actually very valuable for some other effects I need for the same movie. I don't have AE, but I've heard that Apple Motion can do everything AE does, and I have that as part of FCS. Do you know if that's true? If not, I have a couple of friends who will let me use their AE software.

Knightly, thank you as well for the link to the software - free is an awesome price! :D Have you used this particular software yourself and, if so, do you know if it will work properly if the face is moving? The examples I've seen have all used still images.
 
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I'm not sure, but on a moving shot, any alterations made will probably need to be tracked. I'm certain there is a warp filter that can be exercised if not a morph filter in AE... but the warp/morph will need to be tracked to the moving face which is keyframing, so time consuming.

Generally, in morphing, you define points and lines in one image/clip and attach them to related points/lines in the outgoing image/clip. The points and lines will need to be animated on both the incoming and outgoing media, other than that a morph is nothing but a cross fade with a warp from the first set of points/lines into the second.
 
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I'm okay with time-consuming, but I think you're right. I haven't been able to find any examples on the web of a moving morph done with AE. Lots of warp effects, but no morphs.

I did find a product called Morph Age Pro, which advertises itself as capable of doing exactly what I need...'cept it's $150. I downloaded a trial version - maybe it'll let me create my two shots before I have to pony up. :)

Anybody heard of/used this?
 
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Hey 2001, did you ever get this worked out?

Maybe you don't need a WHOLE HEAD morph, just facial features..
Im thinking of sequences form "Contact," where Jody Foster faces morphs to her childish face..
Or "What Lies Beneath" where the Michel Phifers faces morphs into the face of the woman her husband killed.

These seem much more doable to me, in a pragmatic way. Simpler use of mask and layers, not so much of a CGI morph.

Thanks
 
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I agree with grinner.. Elastic Reality is awesome.

Morphman will do video to video morphing, and it's cheap generally around $100, currently $50.

As far as I'm aware, AE can't do this kind of morphing out of the box, it likely needs a plugin. I may be wrong, but trying to do it by hand without a plugin would be less than ideal
 
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wheatgrinder,

I haven't gotten to those shots yet, but I did download a trial version of Morph Age Pro, so we'll see.

If not, I'll definitely check out Elastic Reality and/or Morphman. Will, I tried to follow your link but it dead-ended. :(
 
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