Portal:Animation/Selected picture/48

In this example from the open source project Sintel, four facial expressions have been defined as deformations of the face geometry. The mouth is then animated by morphing between these deformations. Dozens of similar controllers are used to animate the rest of the face.

Morph target animation

Credit: Sintel model by Angela Guenette, simplified Sintel rig by Ben Dansie, render by Fama Clamosa

Morph target animation is a method of 3D computer animation used together with techniques such as skeletal animation. In a morph target animation, a "deformed" version of a mesh is stored as a series of vertex positions. In each key frame of an animation, the vertices are then interpolated between these stored positions.