Morphography tutorials

Entering the Magnet Zone

• Main Index • Tutorial Index • Introduction • The Magnet Zone • Making a Morph • Making a Full Body Morph •

Select the magnet zone, either by clicking on that pale circle or from the element selector.

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Try the effects of the dials on the mag zone. The picture shows an overall scale of 70% (still with the 300% yScale applied to the magnet). You can see that the magnet's sphere of influence has shrunk, so that a smaller portion of the ground plane is deformed.

Try all the translate and scale dials. The yTran dial is an interesting one, since the peak will grow as the centre of the zone passes the ground plane, and then it will shrink again.

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Try a non-linear scaling, say xScale. Then try the effects of applying yRotate to the mag zone as well, and see how the deformation rotates.

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The magnet zone defines the volume of space where the magnet will have an influence; that influence will be strongest in the centre of the zone, and decreases to zero at the edges. You can change the way this fall-off occurs, but I won't deal with that here. If you want to experiment, double-click on the magnet zone, and select Edit Falloff Graph.

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The magnet zone is where you will do most of your work, by positioning and scaling it. You may find it helpful to change the element style to wireframe instead of the default outline style. This will make your zone's shape more easily visible, useful if you depart from the spherical a lot.

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To summarise the steps:

1. Apply a magnet to the prop or body part you want to affect.
2. Use scale and/or translate of the magnet itself to see if that will give the effect you want.
3. If not (as is most likely), leave the magnet settings a bit stronger than you want them, and refine them using the magnet zone.

Next: Making a Morph

• Main Index • Tutorial Index • Introduction • The Magnet Zone • Making a Morph • Making a Full Body Morph •