Graph-based body animation morphing system, Maya to runtime. Seamless character transformations.
Marvel’s Avengers needed character transformations - Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, Ms Marvel embiggening - that read as a continuous motion rather than a hard swap. The animation team needed to author those transitions in Maya the way they author any other animation, and the runtime needed to play them back on a body that was actually changing shape, not just swapping a mesh.
The system was graph-based body morphing: a node graph describing how each body part interpolates between source and target rigs, exported from Maya into a runtime representation the engine could blend frame by frame.
What made it tricky
- Topology change without visible popping - skin weights, accessory placement, and joint hierarchies all shifting through the transition.
- Authoring in Maya that survived round-tripping to runtime without an artist having to hand-tune the runtime side.
- Predictable cost - the budget for these transitions was small, so the runtime evaluator had to be tight.
Shipped in Marvel’s Avengers (2020).