Tutorial: Morphing

Any object in Inspire Studio can be morphed using cages. Cages can affect either the entire object or a portion of it. With PolyNURBS, you have additional control of morphing because you can apply various strengths of cages and visualize the effects.

In this lesson, you will learn about:
  • Setting up a cage
  • Editing a cage
  • Defining the area that will be deformed by the cage
  • Adding, duplicating, and removing cages
  • Resizing the cage to morph the desired area
  • Morphing the object

Open the File

First, let's open an existing PolyNURBS file so that we can create cages around the geometry that we want to morph.

  1. Browse to your personal assets folder. The default location of this folder on Windows is here: C:\Users\yourname\Documents\Altair\InspireStudio\Assets\Scenes.
  2. Open the poly_morph.istudio file.
    The model is loaded.

Set Up the Cage

In this step, we'll create and modify the cage without morphing the object.
  1. On the ribbon, click the Deform tab.
  2. Click the Cage icon.

  3. Select the car, and then right-click to confirm.
    A cage is created around the entire car. By default, the cage starts out as a box with four points along each side with a degree of 3.

  4. Press W to open the Move tool.
  5. Scale and position the cage to modify only the front of the car as shown in the video.

Edit the Cage

To more precisely control the underlying mesh, we need to add sections to the default cage.

  1. In the Control Panel, under the Setup tab, select Add Sections.
  2. We want to add three sections along X, Y, and Z. Hover the cursor along an edge until it snaps to the midpoint, and then click to add a section. To change the direction, press Shift.
  3. Optional: If the sections aren't distributed evenly:
    1. Select all points of the cage.
    2. Right-click, and then select Spread Points Evenly Along Red, Spread Points Evenly Along Blue, or Spread Points Evenly Along Green.


Define the Area of Influence

  1. To show the areas that will be deformed by the cage, in the Control Panel, select Area of Influence.
    Now you can see which control points you need to move in order to deform the areas you want.
    • Green indicates areas that will be deformed.
    • Red indicates areas that won't be deformed.
    • Yellow indicates boundaries, which will be partially deformed.
  2. Using the Move tool, reposition and resize the cage to modify the area of influence in real time as shown in the video.

Add, Duplicate, or Remove Cages

You can add multiple cages to increase your control over deforming the geometry.

  1. In the guide bar, select Edit Cages.
    The Cage Editor dialog is displayed.
  2. Click Add.
    A new default sized cage is added.
  3. Repeat the steps in Edit the Cage to move this cage to the rear of the car. This cage will affect the spoiler of the car.
    Tip: You can select Area of Influence before transforming a cage. This allows you to reposition and resize the cage precisely.
  4. To duplicate a cage, select the cage from the list and click Duplicate.
  5. Use the Move tool to reposition the new cage.
  6. To remove a cage, select it from the list and click Remove.

Morph the Object

In this step, we'll deform the object while modifying the cage.

  1. Select the cage to morph. In this case, select Cage 1.
  2. On the Control Panel, select the Morph tab.
  3. To select a row of vertices, select the first vertex, hold down Alt, and then select the final vertex. Morph the vertices as shown in this video.
  4. Use Local Edge Sliding to slide the control points along their local x-, y-, or z-axis instead of the same direction as the dragged arrow, as shown in this video.
  5. To reset the morphing, click Reset Cage.

Displace the Cages

Once you have morphed cages, you can control the displacement (i.e, the degree of morphing from 0–100%). This parameter is important if you use the Design Table tool and HyperStudy to make your model more aerodynamic.

  1. In the Control Panel, select the Morph tab.
    There is a Displacement value for every cage. In this tutorial, we have 3 cages, so there are 3 Displacement values:
    • Cage 1 (%)
    • Cage 2 (%)
    • Cage 3 (%)
  2. In the Control Panel, enter a value from 0 to 100% for Cage #1, Cage #2, or Cage 3 (%) to affect the morphing influence for that particular cage.