xmorph (1)

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
MORPH OPTIONS
MAKING MOVIES
AUTHOR
SEE ALSO
NOTES
WEB SITE

NAME

xmorph - image warping and dissolving (morphing) for X window system

morph - command line interface image morphing program

SYNOPSIS

xmorph [-start srcimgfile [-finish destimgfile]] [-src srcmeshfile [-dst dstmeshfile ]] [-help]

morph [-start srcimgfile [-finish destimgfile]] [-src srcmeshfile [-dst dstmeshfile ]] [-out outimgfile ] [-mt morphtween ] [-dt dissolvetween ] [-help]

DESCRIPTION

xmorph is a digital image warping and dissolving program, also known as a "morphing" program. It runs under the X Window System. The primary use of xmorph is to generate and modify meshes which control the shape of an image. xmorph also has the capacity to dissolve images together, and to generate a sequence of warped and dissolved images. When this sequence is made into a movie, it is called a "morph".

morph is a morphing program with no graphical user interface. morph performs image warping and dissolving but provides no means to create or modify meshes. The intent is to use morph after meshes have already been generated with xmorph. Since morph has no GUI, it can be run as a background job and can be distributed over many machines or processes. This parallelization of the task can significanly speed up the image processing. morph can run on machines which have no display whatsoever, and is therefore very portable.

Both xmorph and morph use a library called libmorph which can be used separately in the creation of other morphing programs.

If imgfile names are provided on the command line, then those images are loaded in. Otherwise, xmorph generates images to be used in lieu of images provided by the user. Images may be loaded from menus within xmorph.

xmorph has built-in help pages that answer questions about the details of its use. Run xmorph and look at the online help for more information.

OPTIONS

-start srcimgfile: Read the srcimgfile as the "source" image.
-finish destimgfile: Read the destimgfile as the "destination" image.
-src srcmeshfile: Read the srcmeshfile as the "source" mesh.
-dst destmeshfile: Read the destimgfile as the "destination" mesh.
-help: Display command line options.

MORPH OPTIONS

-out outimgfile: Write the the output image to outimgfile .
-mt morphtween: Use morphtween as the warping tween parameter. Values are from 0 to 1. 0 means that the shape of the output is according to the source mesh. 1 means that the shape is according to the destination mesh. Default value is 0.
-dt dissolvetween: Use dissolvetween as the dissolve tween parameter. Values are from 0 to 1. 0 means that the image of the output is according to the source image. 1 means that the image is according to the destination image. Negative values indicate that a sigmoid sharpening function is to be applied to make the dissolving more concentrated to values near 0.5. The idea is that the dissolvetween value should be the negative of the morphtween value in order to have the dissolve be more rapid during middle values of the warp tween parameter, and less rapid otherwise. This makes the morph more visually acceptable. Default value is 0.

MAKING MOVIES

xmorph is NOT a tool for making movies. xmorph is intended to be used with OTHER tools for editting movies in the digital domain. I do not intend to add movie making abilities to xmorph.

Here is a brief explanation of how to make a movie from the images generated by xmorph:

xmorph uses the TrueVision Targa (TGA) image file format. You can use PBMplus, netpbm, ImageMagick or some other program to convert Targa to other still image formats. (This will be necessary if, for example, you use the Berkeley MPEG encoder or want to make an animated GIF.) See, e.g., ftp://ikaros.fysik4.kth.se/pub/netpbm/.

Use another program, such as Berkeley's mpeg_encode, or SGI's dmconvert, or whirlgif to turn the sequence of images that xmorph created into a single animation. See, e.g., ftp://mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/multimedia/mpeg/encode/.

Use another program, such as mpeg_play, xanim or movieplayer, to view the animation. See, e.g., ftp://mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/multimedia/mpeg/play/.

There are plenty of other programs available for viewing movies.

AUTHOR

Help came from many places, including Andy Thaller, Warwick Allison, and Mike Hoefelein.

The original morphing algorithm is presented in ``A Two-Pass Mesh Warping Algorithm for Object Transformation and Image Interpolation'', ILM Technical Memo #1030, Computer Graphics Department, Lucasfilm Ltd., 1990.

Mesh-based digital image warping is discussed in detail in Digital Image Warping by George Wolberg.

Xmorph is a GNU program.

NOTES

The only image file type currently supported is Truevision Targa (TGA) but xmorph will load any type of Targa, such as 8-bit, 15-bit, or 16-bit colormapped or grayscale; 24-bit or 32-bit true color (with or without alpha channel); run-length encoded or uncompressed.

Some versions of the program "xv" can not read xmorph's TGA image files. This is a bug in "xv", not in xmorph.

Use image conversion programs (such as those listed in the SEE ALSO section) to convert to and from TGA image files for use with xmorph and morph .

Report bugs to gourlay@colorado-research.com or mennucc1@debian.org