DOES ADDING MORPHS TO A MODEL CAUSE COMPUTER RESOURCES GET USED TOO MUCH?
For a long time I have wished, and I have also seen several comments from other people, wishing that we could do more than just scale and rotate the basic 3D models. As one example, if we could adjust the shapes of the faces in cubes the we could use them to create many kinds of models inside iClone without having to be able to create models in 3D tools such Blender etc.
One on the new things in iClone 7 I really enjoy using is the Morph Animation addition. I do enjoy creating models in Blender but I still wish I could adjust the shapes of basic models inside iClone itself so I can create models I need for a sceen inside iClone itself without having to create it in Blender. Obviously there are models that must be done that way but being able to create some basic models within iClone save time while making a movie.
Anyway, I have the idear that Morphs can be used to enable the shaping of basic models inside iClone in order to create other models. I will say that what I have done with this so far is working really well. At least, I enjoy doing it, I get things done more quickly than having to make everything in Blender. And not only can they be used to create specific shaped models but they can also be used to animate the shapes of the models made from them. Anyway I thought I would publish them in my store here so other people who might be interrested in it can also create specific models without having to be a high level user of 3D modelling softwares. It can all be done totally inside iClone only.
I will say that one major thought about this that I had was how much extra computer resources would get used up by using Morph Animations in basic shapes to create all kinds of models instead of creating any of those specific models in Blender. I tried testing to see how many of one of my Cubes without any Morphs added would increase iClones Video Memory. I loaded one and kept duplicating it until iClones video morph increased. I duplicated it 200 times and iClones video morph still hadn't increased so I then started with a new empty project and loaded one of the Cubes that has several morphs added and then started duplicating it. Again I got to 200 duplications and iClones Video Memory still hadn't increased. By the way, I find that each time I increase something I need to use my computer mouse to scroll in and out of the sceen so the video memory gets updated. Anyway, the main point of this is it takes a lot of these cubes to increase the Video Memory usage by just 0.1GB
I still wanted to see how much extra effect on usage of computer resources that morph animations can cause so I decided to create a cube with lots of vertices and edges so it will affect computer resource useage more. So I created this model. The red one is the cube used in iClone and as you can see there are many edges.
The other 4 objects are versions of it that got added to the main one as morphs.

Anyway I created a project with nothing in it. As you can see in this next image its Video Memory is 0.5GB
Then I added a cube with no morphs and started duplicating it and when it got to the 14th one the video memory increased to 0.6GB.
Next I tried doing the same with a cube that only had 1 morph added to it. This time it took 11 to increase the video memory to 0.6GB
Finally I wondered how many morphs added to the cube would affect the computer resource usage.
So I loaded a cube with 4 morphs added to it and it still took 11 to increase the video memory to 0.6GB

Anyway, the decicion I get from this is that using morphs on models does increase the usage of computer resources but it is so low that its worth using these in basic models so I can create specific models needed for a sceen I am working on without having to go to a 3D modelling tool such as Blender to create everything I need. Yes, some models just must be made in things like Blender but I actually find it easier/quicker creating some models within iClone itself using these mophable basic models and also have the ability to use them for animating objects in my video also.
Need to say too that its adding textures that will increase the computer resources quicker, especially with these because I have made them easy to add different textures to the faces on the model. One thing is if you want to use the same texture on many faces then just load it onto 1 face and then use pick material and past material in the modify material setting in iClone to add it to the other faces.That way the texture only gets loaded once and gets applied to all the faces you past it onto. It also means that if you make a change the texture used on many faces then all the models faces using it will all get changed automatically.
One major point is its totally up to your own preferences as to whether you want to use these also.
I am going to add more demonstrations to show how I use these and the effects that can be achieved with them.
One more final point, these models in my store are only useable within iclone movie making. They are not useable for creating models to export for use in game engines
i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit