Step-By-Step Walkthrough: Geometric Glass Morphing

This technique uses a Pose Morph workflow to transition one glass shape into another. The secret to a glitch-free morph is ensuring the point order and count remain identical across all versions.

1. Model the Base Geometry

Start by modeling your first glass shape from a Cylinder. It is vital to subdivide it sufficiently at this stage to account for the most complex shape in your sequence. Do not use Booleans or Remeshing later, as these will change the point count and break the morph.

2. Create the Shape Variants

Duplicate your base cylinder for every new glass shape you want to create (e.g., a wine glass, a flute, a tumbler). Modify these duplicates only by moving, scaling, or rotating existing points/edges. Do not add or delete any geometry. This ensures each version has the exact same number of points and the same index order.

3. Apply the Pose Morph Tag

Select your primary glass object and add a Pose Morph tag. In the tag settings, ensure Points is enabled. Drag each of your shape variants into the Poses list to define them as targets.

4. Transition the Shapes

Switch the Pose Morph tag to Animate mode. You can now use the sliders to blend between the different glass shapes. To make the transition feel more organic, animate the sliders with overlapping keyframes so one shape begins to form before the previous one has fully vanished.

5. Refine with Deformers

Morphs can sometimes look "linear" or robotic. To add polish, place your glass inside a Null and add a Smoothing Deformer or a Jiggle Deformer. This adds a slight secondary motion or "bounce" to the glass walls as they snap into their new positions, making the glass feel less rigid.

6. Handling Refractions & Materials

Glass materials rely on thickness and internal volume for realistic refractions. If the geometry intersects itself during the morph, your Redshift or Standard glass shader may turn black or display artifacts. To minimize this, use a Thicken generator after the Pose Morph in the object hierarchy, rather than modeling the thickness directly into the morph targets.

Pro-Tip: If the morph looks "messy" (points traveling through the center of the object), try using the Correction Deformer to manually tweak the path of the points during the middle of the transition, then add that corrected state as an intermediate pose.

Glass Morph

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