XMORPH(1)

📦 in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

okay bestie, gather round 💅 this is the General Commands Manual page for xmorph and morph, and it's genuinely one of the most iconic little graphics tools ever. no cap. let's get into it ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

  • xmorph — image warping and dissolving (morphing) for X window system 💖
  • morph — command line interface image morphing program 🦋

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

xmorph [-start srcimgfile [-finish destimgfile]] [-src srcmeshfile [-dst dstmeshfile ]] [-help]
morph [-start srcimgfile [-finish destimgfile]] [-src srcmeshfile [-dst dstmeshfile ]] [-out outimgfile ] [-mt morphtween ] [-dt dissolvetween ] [-help]

👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

so. xmorph is a digital image warping and dissolving program — aka a "morphing" program, iykyk. it runs under the X Window System. the primary use of xmorph is to generate and modify meshes which control the shape of an image. but that's not all she does 💅 xmorph also has the capacity to dissolve images together, and to generate a sequence of warped and dissolved images. and when that sequence gets made into a movie? it's called a "morph". periodt.

morph is a morphing program with no graphical user interface. it does image warping and dissolving, but it provides no means to create or modify meshes. the whole intent is that you run morph after meshes have already been generated with xmorph. and because morph has no GUI, it can be run as a background job and can be distributed over many machines or processes 🫶 this parallelization of the task can significantly speed up the image processing. morph can run on machines which have no display whatsoever, and is therefore very portable ✨

both xmorph and morph use a library called libmorph which can be used separately in the creation of other morphing programs 💜

if imgfile names are provided on the command line, then those images are loaded in. otherwise, xmorph generates images to be used in lieu of images provided by the user. (images may also be loaded from menus within xmorph 🍓)

xmorph has built-in help pages that answer questions about the details of its use. so like, just run xmorph and look at the online help for more information, bestie 👑

🦋 OPTIONS 🦋

  • -start srcimgfile — read the srcimgfile as the "source" image 💖
  • -finish destimgfile — read the destimgfile as the "destination" image ✨
  • -src srcmeshfile — read the srcmeshfile as the "source" mesh 🎀
  • -dst destmeshfile — read the destimgfile as the "destination" mesh 🦋
  • -help — display command line options 🌸

💫 MORPH OPTIONS 💫

these ones are morph-only, bestie, don't go looking for them in the GUI:

  • -out outimgfile — write the output image to outimgfile 🎀
  • -mt morphtween — use morphtween as the warping tween parameter. values are from 0 to 1. 0 means that the shape of the output is according to the source mesh. 1 means that the shape is according to the destination mesh. default value is 0. 🌈
  • -dt dissolvetween — use dissolvetween as the dissolve tween parameter. values are from 0 to 1. 0 means that the image of the output is according to the source image. 1 means that the image is according to the destination image. negative values indicate that a sigmoid sharpening function is to be applied to make the dissolving more concentrated to values near 0.5. the idea is that the dissolvetween value should be the negative of the morphtween value in order to have the dissolve be more rapid during middle values of the warp tween parameter, and less rapid otherwise. this makes the morph more visually acceptable 👑 default value is 0. ✨

🎬 MAKING MOVIES 🎬

okay this part is IMPORTANT and I need you to hear me: xmorph is NOT a tool for making movies. xmorph is intended to be used with OTHER tools for editting movies in the digital domain. and the author does not intend to add movie making abilities to xmorph. that's just the vibe. 💀

here's a brief explanation of how to make a movie from the images generated by xmorph, bestie:

xmorph uses the TrueVision Targa (TGA) image file format. you can use PBMplus, netpbm, ImageMagick or some other program to convert Targa to other still image formats. (this will be necessary if, for example, you use the Berkeley MPEG encoder or want to make an animated GIF.) see, e.g., ftp://ikaros.fysik4.kth.se/pub/netpbm/ 🦋

use another program, such as Berkeley's mpeg_encode, or SGI's dmconvert, or whirlgif to turn the sequence of images that xmorph created into a single animation. see, e.g., ftp://mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/multimedia/mpeg/encode/ 🔥

use another program, such as mpeg_play, xanim or movieplayer, to view the animation. see, e.g., ftp://mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/multimedia/mpeg/play/ ✨

and honestly? there are plenty of other programs available for viewing movies. go wild 🍓

💜 AUTHOR 💜

written and Copyright (C) 1994-2000 by Michael J. Gourlay. 🫶

help came from many places, including Andy Thaller, Warwick Allison, and Mike Hoefelein. legends, all of them.

the original morphing algorithm is presented in ``A Two-Pass Mesh Warping Algorithm for Object Transformation and Image Interpolation'', ILM Technical Memo #1030, Computer Graphics Department, Lucasfilm Ltd., 1990. (Lucasfilm!! the range 🎬)

mesh-based digital image warping is discussed in detail in Digital Image Warping by George Wolberg 📚

Xmorph is a GNU program. 🌈

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

  • X(1)
  • ppmtotga(1) (part of netpbm or PBMplus)
  • tgatoppm(1) (part of netpbm or PBMplus)
  • whirlgif(1)
  • mpeg_encode(1) from U.C. Berkeley
  • mpeg_play(1) from U.C. Berkeley
  • ImageMagick
  • dmconvert(1), (under Silicon Graphics IRIX)
  • movieplayer(1) (under Silicon Graphics IRIX)
  • xanim(1)
  • GIMP(1)

📝 NOTES 📝

the only image file type currently supported is TrueVision Targa (TGA) — but xmorph will load any type of Targa, such as 8-bit, 15-bit, or 16-bit colormapped or grayscale; 24-bit or 32-bit true color (with or without alpha channel); run-length encoded or uncompressed. she's flexible like that 💅

bug alert: some versions of the program "xv" can not read xmorph's TGA image files. this is a bug in "xv", not in xmorph. put some respect on her name 😭

use image conversion programs (such as those listed in the SEE ALSO section) to convert to and from TGA image files for use with xmorph and morph 🫶

report bugs to gourlay@colorado-research.com or mennucc1@debian.org — they wanna hear from you, fr fr 🐛

🌈 WEB SITE 🌈

aaaand that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 it's the XMORPH(1) page out of the General Commands Manual — the title line says it all and honestly? iconic minimalism. go forth and morph something gorgeous, and remember: meshes first, movies later, with OTHER tools. mwah 💋💖✨

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