197 lines
9.4 KiB
Plaintext
197 lines
9.4 KiB
Plaintext
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In article <1991Nov17.023604.19665@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>
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|> Does anybody know how they did that effect in the new Michael
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|> Jackson video with all of the faces merging together? It looks
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|> an awful lot like that Ford minivan commercial which looks a
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|> lot like T2 liquid metal transformatios which I read were based
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|> on The Abyss water manipulation effects. -Bill
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Of course they were done by the great folks at Pacific Data Images,
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with a program that I wrote for them. The technique is called morph
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(actually, the ILM people who first used it in production call it
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morf), and consists of identifying features in the two animations
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that should map to one another, and distorting each animation to
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be the same shape as the other, while cross-dissolving from the
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first to the second.
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--
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Thad Beier
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============================================================================
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To: ALL Number: 4917
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From: WDYE@CSE.UNL.EDU (WILLIAM Refer #: None (ECHO)
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Date: 11-23-91 11:10 Recvd: No
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Subj: Re: Michael Jackson Video Conf: 292 Graphics
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BBS: Rose Media - Hamilton
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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thad@lever.asd.sgi.com (Thad Beier) writes:
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>Of course they were done by the great folks at Pacific Data
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>Images, with a program that I wrote for them. The
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>technique is called morph...
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I don't suppose there's a public-domain version of the morph
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algorithm, is there?
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============================================================================
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To: ALL Number: 4919
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From: JBM@EOS.ARC.NASA.GOV (JEF Refer #: None (ECHO)
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Date: 11-23-91 15:10 Recvd: No
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Subj: Re: Michael Jackson Video Conf: 292 Graphics
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BBS: Rose Media - Hamilton
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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thad@lever.asd.sgi.com (Thad Beier) writes:
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>Of course they were done by the great folks at Pacific Data
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>Images, with a program that I wrote for them. The
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>technique is called morph (actually, the ILM people who
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>first used it in production call it morf), and consists of
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>identifying features in the two animations that should
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^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^
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>map to one another,
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^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^
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>and distorting each animation to
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>be the same shape as the other, while cross-dissolving
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>from the first to the second.
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This feature matching business seems like the trickiest part;
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is that done by a human operator, or by an automatic process?
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--
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Jeff Mulligan (jbm@eos.arc.nasa.gov)
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NASA/Ames Research Ctr., Mail Stop 262-2, Moffett Field CA, 94035
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(415) 604-3745
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============================================================================
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To: ALL Number: 4920
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From: PETER@CUNIXF.CC.COLUMBIA. Refer #: None (ECHO)
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Date: 11-23-91 15:10 Recvd: No
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Subj: Re: Michael Jackson Video Conf: 292 Graphics
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BBS: Rose Media - Hamilton
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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In article <1991Nov18.215359.9190@unlinfo.unl.edu> wdye@cse.unl.edu (William Dy:
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>thad@lever.asd.sgi.com (Thad Beier) writes:
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>
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>>Of course they were done by the great folks at Pacific Data
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>>Images, with a program that I wrote for them. The
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>>technique is called morph...
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>
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>I don't suppose there's a public-domain version of the morph
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>algorithm, is there?
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I haven't seen the Michael Jackson video but I think this morph
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algorithm also goes by the name of 2-pass mesh warping .. at least
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that's how it's described in the book that I have. There is source
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code for this alg. in the book. starting on p.222.
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The book's name is Digital Image Warping by George Wolberg, IEEE
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computer society press monograph, isbn 0-8186-8944-7.
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I haven't gotten to that part of the book yet, and it's doubtful that
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I will this semester (I'm taking a course taught by the author).
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Well, I'm sure if I'm wrong about the 2-pass mesh warping stuff,
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someone will correct me. :)
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PQ?
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Pedro Quien? peter@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu Peter K. Wu
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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============================================================================
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To: ALL Number: 4923
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From: SIMON@IVEM.UUCP (SIMON LE Refer #: None (ECHO)
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Date: 11-23-91 15:10 Recvd: No
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Subj: Re: Michael Jackson Video Conf: 292 Graphics
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BBS: Rose Media - Hamilton
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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In article <1991Nov18.215359.9190@unlinfo.unl.edu> wdye@cse.unl.edu (William Dy:
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>I don't suppose there's a public-domain version of the morph
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>algorithm, is there?
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I don't know if there are any PD programs to do morphing, but my co-worker
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and I worked for about an hour entering relative data points of our digitized
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faces into the Iris here at work. He wrote a little program to take our
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digitized faces and map them onto a 2 dimentional plane. Taking those points
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that relate (where we wanted to look like it's stretching and shrinking from
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me to him), he moved them from my face's detail points to his. At the same
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time he's blending the two images, fading from me to him. With around 95
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relating points entered (which took a long time to match, but still wasn't
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enough, I think), there were 181 triangle meshes created. But the effect
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is pretty funny, but real looking, almost. I want to work on it more, but
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the point is, it only took him 30 minutes to write the program to do this.
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(It cost the guys who made the video 8 million? We're up for hire :)
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To tell you the truth, the actual rendering was done with another program
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he's written called SYNU, which is a PD rendering package available from
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the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Synu is a rendering "language" almost.
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It's full of functions that are used by the programmer to create images
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from scene files. I'm not too sure how it works, but it worked great on
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the morphing ;)
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-Simon
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--
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* Simon Lee * Microscopy and Imaging Resources *
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============================================================================
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To: ALL Number: 4930
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From: THAD@LEVER.ASD.SGI.COM (T Refer #: None (ECHO)
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Date: 11-23-91 15:10 Recvd: No
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Subj: Re: Michael Jackson Video Conf: 292 Graphics
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BBS: Rose Media - Hamilton
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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In article <1991Nov19.165115.27090@network.ucsd.edu>, simon@ivem.uucp (Simon Le:
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... interesting description of good first morph program deleted...
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|> I want to work on it more, but
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|> the point is, it only took him 30 minutes to write the program to do this.
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|> (It cost the guys who made the video 8 million? We're up for hire :)
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It is true that the morph programs are not all that complex. I wrote the
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basic part of the one that PDI uses in a couple of days, and added a
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reasonably nice interface, animation, and optimizations in another
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couple of weeks.
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The whole Michael Jackson video had a budget of $7-8 million, the
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morph scenes were a tiny fraction of that (< 5%). It is important
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to realize that the expensive part of computer graphic production
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is not writing the programs, but doing the actual animation. There
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was over 8 animator-weeks spent doing the keyframes for the
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Michael Jackson video. That's a lot of work.
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As a completely non-impartial observer of the animation, I find
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it staggeringly good. I saw it again last night, and could not
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believe how good it was. I know what the program can do and
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what it can't do...it was just incredibly skilled work by the
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animators that made that piece look good.
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|>
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|> --
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|> * Simon Lee * Microscopy and Imaging Resources *
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|> * simon@ivem.ucsd.edu * Intermediate Voltage Electron Micro *
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|> * sulee@ucsd.edu * UC San Diego, Dept. of Neuroscience *
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--
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Thad Beier What is good, and what is not good, need we ask anybody
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to tell us these things?
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============================================================================
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To: ALL Number: 4951
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From: SIMON@IVEM.UCSD.EDU (SIMO Refer #: None (ECHO)
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Date: 11-24-91 03:10 Recvd: No
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Subj: Re: Michael Jackson Video Conf: 292 Graphics
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BBS: Rose Media - Hamilton
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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My last posting on the morphing referenced a program called SYNU. I
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stated it was a Public Domain program, but from I've learned it is NOT
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Public Domain, nor is it available to just anyone. It is, however,
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open to the scientific community. If you have any questions about this,
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please contact the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
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-Simon
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--
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* Simon Lee * Microscopy and Imaging Resources *
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