qtquick3d-morphing.qdoc

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// Copyright (C) 2021 The Qt Company Ltd.
// SPDX-License-Identifier: LicenseRef-Qt-Commercial OR GFDL-1.3-no-invariants-only
 
/*!
 
\title Morphing Animation
\page quick3d-morphing
 
\section1 Introduction
 
Morphing animation (also known as \e{vertex animation}) is a way to simulate deformations of soft
materials. It transforms one shape smoothly into another. This is done by creating a mesh that
contains multiple positions for each vertex. Each additional set of positions defines a shape,
called a \l{MorphTarget}{morph target}. When animating, a \l{MorphTarget::weight}{weight} is
assigned to each target. The effective position of each vertex is calculated by linear interpolation
between the positions for that target, according to the weights.
 
Morphing differs from \l{Vertex Skinning}{skeletal animation} where we create an imagined skeleton,
and rig the model by defining the relationship between each vertex of the model and the nodes of
that skeleton.
 
Note that the fundamental structure of each morph target must be the same: If three vertices form a
triangle in the base model, they will form a triangle in all the morph targets. The triangle can
have a completely different position, orientation, and size; or it can even be effectively removed
by making it a degenerate triangle with size zero.
 
In most cases, the mesh will be created by an external tool, and imported using the \l{Balsam Asset
Import Tool}{Balsam} asset import tool. For example, in the Blender 3D editor, morph targets are
called "shape keys", and in Autodesk Maya they are called "blend shapes".
 
The \l{Qt Quick 3D - Morphing Example}{morphing example} shows how to control the weights of a model
imported from Blender.
 
The \l{Qt Quick 3D - Custom Morphing Animation}{custom morphing animation example} shows how to
create a morph target in C++ by subclassing QQuick3DGeometry.
*/