Requesting a new window/control set for "Morphing Modifiers", AKA: Transitions.

JD_Mortal

Here is my situation. (Recently sort-of resolved, but not without issues. Issues will be stated below too.)

1: I LOVE to modify models with just the morphs themselves.

2: I LOVE to play with the "tweens" of those morphs. (Transitions between one morph result, and the other.) Eg, Making a long-nose witch. Making a big-ear troll. Then mixing the two, or three, or four... For a medium-ear troll, with a slightly larger nose, like a witch.

The problem... This has to be done manually, by looking at all the numbers for the morphs, calculating the "mid value", and typing it in, into a new character. Or, you have to go through a complex process of making custom "Morphs" which are just settings of other morphs. Then, you have to go through another complex process of making another blend-controller, or attempting to manually adjust each controller and save or write-down the settings, to get a new model that doesn't depend on these disposable controlls, so you can use it in another project. (Otherwise you have to make the controls permanant in your collection, and ALSO distribute those. Which is not what is wanted and should not be needed.)

The solution...

A new set of controls which ONLY creates "Transitions", of "Morphs". Thus, turning it on, as it would off by default or set to 0% like a morph, would apply whatever "Starting morphs" you set. Then, adjusting it up to the end, would apply the "Ending morphs" you set. With the values between the START and END, being a transition blend of the two.

Used by selecting a model with morphs, then selecting "Create Transition". (Now you have a transition/morph, from base-model to whatever this is. Just like a normal morph control does.)

You set the new transition to 0, and apply whatever changes are desired, or 100% and change it. (Selecting "Create Transition" again, will stack the changes as the new END. Previously, the START was the end, as the true start was obviously no-morphs.)

The other option, if the slider is as 100% of a transition-marker, would be to "Update Transition", which would just change the set point with the models "new values". If not at 100%, then it makes this spot 100% for the injected transition, and the actual 100% would not change. It would just be bumped-up in the chain of transitions. No changes would alter any forward or backward transitions. Each "level" would just be whatever you set them to, not compounded.

Bonus if we can chain transitions, instead of just using two, for greater "Simple" control of evolutionary scale. (Eg, first transition might be from adult to an over-weight elder. Second transition being that over-weight elder to an anorexic elder. All using existing morphs, not adding more morphs.)

Ultimately, since these are NOT actual morphs, they should save as the "modified morphs values", not as "a value of the morphs, AND the value of the transition". Since the transition would not be in any other model-set. Also, so the model can be saved at any point in the transition, with ONLY the dependancies of the actual morphs, not a dependancy on the transitions controls and the morphs too. Though, that could be saved too, if it retained the values of the start and end morphs. (Better to have the option to "Save Transitions", as an individual component. {Which only saves the STARTS and ENDS values of the used morphs.}

Chained transitions would just be recycling the END of one transition, with the addition of a new END... Signified as a CHAIN, by the value of a prior chain as the starting morph. Retaining a singular slider for all transitions. (Maybe a dual slider, to set the starting-point of the chain. With three in a chain, it would have four values. 0 = base-model, 1=first end, 2=second end, 3=third end at 100%, where you would then add another one, if desired.)

I'll talk about a "blend-mode" option in another request thread. (Mixing two models at 100% would not yield 200% output, but 50% of each... or 33.33% of each if using 3 controls set to 100%. Well, a ratio of whatever is altered, relative to 100%. For "evolution control", style of blended mixing. That is not as graceful of a control, but not a difficult formula to manage.)

IsaacNewton

This type of blending approach would be very useful. I have often wished it were available myself. I agree that it does seem senisble that when saving the blended morph only the final % values for each contributary morph would be saved. Saving the blend values used to create the final blend would be a separate thing, but also useful. Perhaps a new Morph Blend file type would need to be created (actually this could be a simple txt file).

Anyway, a good idea, maybe a PA somewhere with scripting skills couould take this on to make a plugin.