I’ve always wondered how you make a character transform or shape shift. I’d assume it’s done by shape keys and a great deal of patience, or is there a more efficient way to do it?
You mean for example going from a human to a dog? I’d use shape keys and a lot of thought regarding the topology.
You might find this old cgcookie tutorial series helpful:
No Panacea too be found, but its not as hard as it looks …also a technical point that is overlooked is that your model needs to have the same amount of vertices / faces…please correct me if I am wrong on that point community
It depens a lot on the context ( film, game ) , in film the transformation is generally broken down in several shots, each with it’s own challenges.
Technically , you may have one head that is morphing on another with shape keys, you then need to have matching topology , amount of vert ect… It’s technically simple but maybe not the best effect ever. In the end you don’t need to recreate reality here, only give the impression that this is real .
One good approach could be something in the lines of this recent tutorial :
You may also need to add some compositing over it , to have good textures transitions ect…
In the end what will make this believable and/or impressive is also camera work , lighting, animation ect…
If it’s for a movie I’d plan some shots first by taking inspiration on various films, then I’ll make some tests for different kind of shots . Depending on the shot I’ll go for some simple shapes keys to some things more elaborate like the tutorial I’ve posted.
Beside transforming geometry you may need to add some cloth tearing, some fur growing, animate textures transition in a cool way, all that is not that complex, but it’s adding all that together that can be challenging and requires different people with different abilities .
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