Controlling morphs in AVI animation

I have been doing quite a lot of animation, using Xara Designer Pro for graphics and for creating short AVI sequences. You can do proper morphs between shapes when exporting in this mode.

However, there is no way to accurately determine how the points within a morph will map (unlike the Blend tool, which at least offers 1:1 mapping as an option. Changing the starting vertex doesn't seem to effect it either.

Any suggestions?

Here is a video that I made for the David Bowie song "Sound and Vision":
https://youtu.be/nL3QYxBV_g4

Wow, great animation Simon.

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However, there is no way to accurately determine how the points within a morph will map (unlike the Blend tool, which at least offers 1:1 mapping as an option. Changing the starting vertex doesn't seem to effect it either.

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Can you explain more re this issue?

Is it within these sequences?

Those are less critical. The issue arises when I want to morph from (say) a trapezium to a rectangle, in a way that suggests changing perspective. Xara is almost wilfully not doing that. Same for objects in moulds, and groups.

Just for fun, here's another Xara-created animation, this time for "Birdland" by Weather Report:
https://youtu.be/uKVuXFX93iA

if you mean give the impression of movement in the z-plane I am pretty sure xara does not do that

afaik xara animation is x/y-plane only, and the transformations that are possible are limited

Not at all. I would expect a trapezium to morph into a rectangle in a predictable way, with each vertex moving in a straight line to its counterpart in the target shape (top left -> top left, etc). What actually happens varies, but it seems to produce intermediate vertices, resulting in undesirable shapes! The example below was converted to a GIF from an AVI animation.
Attachment 129595

like I said, the tansformations xara is capable of are limited; as I recall it does not do true morphing of one shape to a different shape at all, so what you are seeing probably reflects that

certainly there is no mechanism to anchor source coordinates to target coordinates [unless they have sneaked this in recently]

the pro+ manual implies that it should work for an avi [as opposed to flash/gif], but that is based on you [using keyframes] altering your original shape to the trapezium shape in a duplicated frame - that I call tweening
[edit -or in your example trapesium to rectangle]

to me, morph is when the program interpolates between seperately drawn/created images

I agree with HD. Xara can't do morthing. At it's best you could name a shape and get it to morth from size, width, height, rotation and transparency but you couldn't change it's basic shape. This is what you're trying to do with changing a trapeze into a rectangle using Xara. Xara can only do very limited morphing within a Flash animation, gif's just loop through still images. I notice that the Flash (swf) animation has now been removed from Xara Designer Pro+ (correctly)

In this animation the Egg morphs into a chicks body shape. You couldn't create this in Xara.

LINK

LINK2

don't know about you egg, but it's a long time since I even considered animating in xara - it's a shame that the PDF manual for pro+ still harps on about flash all the time as the only export animation options now are gif [no tweening], or avi which is stated not to have [some at least of] the flash limitations

it needs rewiting to be specific as to what you can/cannot do in an avi export

it appears you can morph [with a small m] objects in xara if you export as avi as opposed to flash, so our collective memory may be flash based [flash memory - geddit? :-O]

take a look at this quick test:

make a drawing on first frame, name drawing; copy first frame and change drawing; repeat; export as avi

Attachment 129604

exported as an avi it works...

Attachment 129605

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[flash memory - geddit? :-O]

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Very sharp today HD.

Yes I agree it does a great job of creating a morthing video but the file size??? 27Mb

Attached a 30Kb svg of the same animation. Again it's Xara falling further behind by not embracing svg's.

I'd process the avi through handbrake or such ; I get a file size then of 16.5 KB when I do this to an .m4v [zipped so it will upload]

Attachment 129607

xara is falling behind the times by sticking with AVI; I doubt this is that useful webwise these days?

mp4 would be better for videos I think; svg as you say for 'simple' animations

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

LINK2

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Egg, what app are you using for this animation?

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Originally Posted by Boy

Egg, what app are you using for this animation?

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That'll be SVGator: https://www.svgator.com/pricing.

Acorn

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Originally Posted by handrawn

like I said, the tansformations xara is capable of are limited; as I recall it does not do true morphing of one shape to a different shape at all, so what you are seeing probably reflects that

certainly there is no mechanism to anchor source coordinates to target coordinates [unless they have sneaked this in recently]

the pro+ manual implies that it should work for an avi [as opposed to flash/gif], but that is based on you [using keyframes] altering your original shape to the trapezium shape in a duplicated frame - that I call tweening
[edit -or in your example trapesium to rectangle]

to me, morph is when the program interpolates between seperately drawn/created images

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No, it is a true morph, just not particularly controllable. I only created two keyframes, and the exported animation contains tweened frames generated by Xara. It will work with any simple shapes drawn in Xara, but not with complex fills, blurs or other effects. Check my "Sound and Vision" video above, animated entirely in Xara.

Regarding egg-to-chick, Xara can definitely do this, and in this case I would guess very well. The issue is more to do with the intermediate stages.

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Originally Posted by Simon Beck

No, it is a true morph, just not particularly controllable. I only created two keyframes, and the exported animation contains tweened frames generated by Xara. It will work with any simple shapes drawn in Xara, but not with complex fills, blurs or other effects. Check my "Sound and Vision" video above, animated entirely in Xara.

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this is going to depend on your terminology which will depend on where you are coming from - in general terms it is a morph, but if you want a Morph then you might wish to read this [paging through the morphing animation sections]:

https://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmo...-morphing.html

of course that program is a true animation program, which xara is definately not....

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Originally Posted by Simon Beck

The issue is more to do with the intermediate stages.

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use the copy frame steps I suggested earlier - in avi it should work fine - you will need some finessing of extra shapes and timing

personally I would not do this in xara, it's not what it is intended for - eggs svgator is much easier

... oh and on the complex fills, blurs and effects... well no; xara is a website animation program

if you want video FX you use a video animation program...

For what it's worth...
Attachment 129608

that gets converted by the forum to a jpeg when you click on it - you made it too big for the forum gif limits ?

800 x 800 pix 1MB

Damn - it's coming up as a JPG! :(

yes - your other gif worked ok

I wish Xara would consider integrating GSAP (GreenSock) [https://css-tricks.com/tag/gsap/].
It would leverage Xara capabilities greatly.

Acorn

link not working .... for me

needed to get rid of ] at end of URL that had got wrapped into your link...

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Originally Posted by handrawn

link not working .... for me
needed to get rid of ] at end of URL that had got wrapped into your link...

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handrawn, sorted the link - thank you.

Acorn