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Process of morphing

Short answer

Morphing combines geometric warping and color blending. Feature points on source and target images are interpolated for each frame, both images are warped to the interpolated positions, then cross-dissolved to produce smooth transitions.

Illustrate the typical process of morphing in computer graphics.

Morphing is a technique that smoothly changes one image (source) into another (target) over a number of frames, by combining a geometric warp and a colour blend. It is used in movies and animation, e.g. a face transforming into another face.

Source image  --warp-->  \
                          >-- cross-dissolve --> in-between frames
Target image  --warp-->  /

Typical process

  1. Select the two images (source and target).
  2. Define corresponding feature points/lines in both images (eyes, nose, mouth, outline); these give the mapping between the images.
  3. Interpolate the feature points for each in-between frame t (0 ≤ t ≤ 1): P(t) = (1 − t)·P_source + t·P_target.
  4. Warp both images so that their feature points move to the interpolated positions (source warped forward, target warped backward).
  5. Cross-dissolve (blend colours): Colour(t) = (1 − t)·Colour_source-warped + t·Colour_target-warped.
  6. Generate and play the frames in sequence (e.g. 24 or 30 per second) to see the smooth transformation.

The result is a seamless transition between the two images.

✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)

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