Controlling morphs in AVI animation

[Simon Beck]

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

[Egg Bramhill]

Wow, great animation Simon.

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.

Can you explain more re this issue?

Is it within these sequences?

[Simon Beck]

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.

[Simon Beck]

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

[handrawn]

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

[Simon Beck]

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.