Image Morphing/Tweening by color, not control points
October 27, 2016 8:05 PM Subscribe
I have a series of images that I would like to animate, but using a fade transition from image to image is less than satisfying. I'd love to be able to do a tweening/morphing type transition from image to image, but the tools I've found for this aren't suited for the type of images I'm working with.
These images consist of random blobs of either one of two colors. while there may be some commonality in the colored regions from image to image, there's no guarantee of it. What may be a convex blob of color #1 in one image, could be the same convex blob with a concave bite taken out of it, or with a long psuedopod extending out form it, or it may have disappeared entirely, to be replaced by a blob of color #2.
All of the morphing/tweening tools I've seen seem geared towards swapping faces on portraits or turning simple geometric shapes from one shape to another, and expect you to mark a set of control points in each image (here are the eyes, the tip of the nose, corners of the mouth...)
After doing some experimenting, I've found that if I mark the edges of the colored blobs and set points on the nearest similar blob in the subsequent image, I can sort of get the effect I want, but because the blobs are so irregular it's a very time-consuming process, and not something I want to go through for each transition of my 50+ images.
What I'm looking for is a tool that would automatically detect "here's the regions of Color #1, here's the regions of Color #2, melt them from image to image to make a smooth animation." Standalone program or Photoshop plugin, preferred.
These images consist of random blobs of either one of two colors. while there may be some commonality in the colored regions from image to image, there's no guarantee of it. What may be a convex blob of color #1 in one image, could be the same convex blob with a concave bite taken out of it, or with a long psuedopod extending out form it, or it may have disappeared entirely, to be replaced by a blob of color #2.
All of the morphing/tweening tools I've seen seem geared towards swapping faces on portraits or turning simple geometric shapes from one shape to another, and expect you to mark a set of control points in each image (here are the eyes, the tip of the nose, corners of the mouth...)
After doing some experimenting, I've found that if I mark the edges of the colored blobs and set points on the nearest similar blob in the subsequent image, I can sort of get the effect I want, but because the blobs are so irregular it's a very time-consuming process, and not something I want to go through for each transition of my 50+ images.
What I'm looking for is a tool that would automatically detect "here's the regions of Color #1, here's the regions of Color #2, melt them from image to image to make a smooth animation." Standalone program or Photoshop plugin, preferred.
You may get some interesting results from a retiming plugin like twixtor - it works by analysing the similarities and differences between frames in a sequence and generating new frames in between them to slow the footage down, or creating motion blur to speed it up. If you give it a sequence of different images to retime, it creates those in between frames based or whatever similarities it can find, and the results can be really warpy and cool looking.
Kronos is another one, but I haven't used that myself, so I can't say for sure that it will work the same way. It may be worth a try, since it's free.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 10:25 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
Kronos is another one, but I haven't used that myself, so I can't say for sure that it will work the same way. It may be worth a try, since it's free.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 10:25 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
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And people write plugins and scripts for Imagemajick; Fred Weinhaus, for example. http://www.fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/shapemorph/
posted by at at 9:54 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]