This is a tutorial to get you going on the way to Morphing your brains
out (Now *there's* an animation begging to be MORPHED, eh?). All of the below
examples, SPLINE MESH and SMOOTH RESAMPLE are left checked. This is to allow 
the smoothest morph possible. See the DOCs for more detailed information.
The POV files included are written to run with POV 1.0. To get started, render 
the files, aliasing being your choice. The files were rendered at 320x200 to 
set up the tutorial meshes, although when you load the program, you'll notice 
that the working surfaces are square. All images, no matter the resolution or 
aspect ratio will be 'squished' in these squares. I have run MORPHs at 640x480
only to find that the animation was too large for my HD. I simply re-rendered 
the files at 320x200 and the meshes *still* fit. I call these working surfaces
the "Great Equalizers". 
So! Handy hint #1:
	Work with low res files to increase speed, cut down on the drain of the
	system and program and do tests at this resolution. When you're happy,
	run MORPH with the higher res files for final results. If you run into
	problems with this method, let me know, 'cause it's worked so far!

On with the tutorial!!

This set of files came with .BAT files to set up the rendered Targa files as
they come straight out of POV. Just copy the batch files and MORPH_*.TGAs into
the directory where MORPH is run. Beware that I have set up the batches to run
MORPHx. If your system cannot run MORPHx, then change the .BAT files to read:
(before) morphx morph_1.tga morph_2.tga
(after)  morph morph_1.tga morph_2.tga
	*be sure to change each .BAT file!*
	
When the program loads you'll see the two viewing windows and each image 
loading into their respective working surfaces. In other words, in the .BAT
example above, MORPH_1.TGA will be the "before" image and MORPH_2.TGA will be
the "after" image. One follows another.

To get started, click on the LOAD button or just press the "L" key. A dialogue 
box appears. Type in MORF1.MSH and press ENTER. If you type the name in wrong,
you'll be unceremoniously dumped out of the program. Just restart and re-load.
As of the writing of this tutorial, the lines do not appear at first. Just 
click on the SPLINE button to 'jump start' the display. At *any* time you load
a .MSH file and the lines do not change, hit that SPLINE button again and 
*voila*, new mesh lines appear.

In this example you see that the LOCKED MESHES button is checked and SPLINE
INTERVALS is unchecked. Here I started by placing a 'centering' line over the
images to be morphed. The lines at the top and bottom are the 'boundaries' of
the morphing field.

Now load MORF1A.MSH.
This is where all I did was place a few more lines to sort of grid off the key
areas I wanted to control first. I then placed lines on the *outside* of the 
image area to morph. This is important. If you'll notice, the morphing objects
have been placed away from any background areas. This prevents the background 
from being caught in the "warping" or "morphing" field and will not be touched 
for the remainder of this exercise. These outside lines will be our control 
lines for the background. More later on this. Go ahead and move a few lines if 
you want. You'll notice that as the vertex points in one window move, the cor-
responding vertex points move with it. This is because they are currently
LOCKED. Try to put a few vertexes on key points. If you like what you've done,
then save this mesh as another name. Remember that there is *no* overwriting
protection in the program yet.

Now load MORF1B.MSH
Here I placed the vertexes where I wanted to control the mesh for morphing.
By looking at the two images I just loosely matched the key image elements
and let them stay where they are for now.

Now load MORF1C.MSH
Notice that the LOCK MESHES box is unchecked and SPLINE INTERVALS is.
This is a good time to mention that when you save a .MSH file, it saves 
the program state as well. This is where I decided I didn't need to have 
one working surface mirror another. The reason is simple. Since the meshes 
have been moved, and as you add other lines, you'll see tha the new lines 
seem to mirror the nearest line neighbor. Actually, it hits an interpolated 
spot between the the two lines it resides within. This works for us here. 
This way we can set as few lines as needed to control major points, but follows
the 'framework' so to speak. Here we start the fine tuning process. By having 
as few lines as we do, we have less confusion. Go ahead and move some of the 
lines, fine tuning the individual vertex points for each image. Think of each 
point as a map. If it is 'here' where you put it, you want the corresponding 
mesh to go to 'there' where you moved it in the opposite working surface. 
Remember! Do not move the outermost lines at all.
Now would be a good time to hit the SPLINE button. Click on the left mouse
button and hold to see the SPLINE results. Release the mouse button and the
mesh returns. If you moved any lines and they overlap when you hit the SPLINE
button, don't worry yet.

Now load MORF1D.MSH
Here is just an example of how I go about placing lines and moving them.
Move them as you wish and check the SPLINE button every once in a while.
Don't fret the overlap too much, but be careful not to go too wacky on them.
Try to keep the shape of the line intersections in a 'squareish' kind of shape.
This simply means to watch not making the square intersections look like tri-
angles.

Now load MORF1E.MSH
Here you can see that as we add lines, by moving in approximate half distances
between lines, we can control the SPLINE paths much easier. It also serves to
make the movement of corresponding vertex points easier to see.
Go ahead and play if you didn't with MORF1D.MSH. We can move them as they are 
added and each line placed next takes on the in-between characteristics of its'
neighbors.

Now load MORF1F.MSH
Note that this has *all* of the vertical interior morphing lines added and 
placed. By interior, we mean all lines that are *inside* of the morphing field.
Notice that the outermost lines we placed are *not moved*. Hit the SPLINE but-
ton and you'll see that the lines inside the morphing field are okay with no 
overlaps. The lines *outside* the morphing field are going crazy. Not to worry.

Now load MORF1G.MSH
Now we have all of the vertical and horizontal lines added here. This is more
to show how the SPLINE effect can really go nuts on you. It is best to add the
horizontal and vertical lines as you need to have control points. Now hit the
SPLINE button and see that the SPLINES are *really* going nuts now. We still 
haven't moved those outermost lines and, dang it, we won't either!

Now load MORF1H.MSH
Okay, this is the wrap up, tired of typing these redundant names yet and start
morphing? Well, hang on! here's the catch:
By adding the lines outside of the morphing field we controlled the shape of 
the SPLINES on the outside. When you add the rest of the horizontal and vert-
ical lines *outside* those control points, we 'shackeled' the SPLINES into
place. Hit the SPLINE button now! Dadgummit, they don't move! No more overlaps.

Now go ahead and hit the 'GO' button or press the 'G' key. It'll start to work
and (depending on your system) soon you'll have a morphed animation ready for 
DTA. 

This has been a loose construction of how to morph. I hope you felt free to 
move lines and play with the zoom features while you were at it. There are 
times when you might not want to control the background so stringently. You
can create 'breathing' or oscillating backgrounds, or create some nifty 
'plasma' type of effects.
You also have MORPH_3.POV to render and morph as well. 
Try this as an excercise:
MORPH Morph_2 to Morph_3 and then Morph_3 back to Morph_1 to create a looped
morph animation. Try to morph anything! 

-Eric Kachelhofer 71005,2130 on Compuserve
 With special thanks to my wife. As a wise man once said, (paraphrasing here)
 "Programmers can be a hard lot to live with", and dangit, she's hooked up with
 a "Programming Artist".