#### 8.3.1 Morph Animation

Morph animation works by storing snapshots of the absolute vertex positions in each keyframe, and interpolating between them. Morph animation is mainly useful for animating objects which could not be adequately handled using skeletal animation; this is mostly objects that have to radically change structure and shape as part of the animation such that a skeletal structure isn’t appropriate.

Because absolute positions are used, it is not possible to blend more than one morph animation on the same vertex data; you should use skeletal animation if you want to include animation blending since it is much more efficient. If you activate more than one animation which includes morph tracks for the same vertex data, only the last one will actually take effect. This also means that the ’weight’ option on the animation state is not used for morph animation.

Morph animation can be combined with skeletal animation if required See Combining Skeletal and Vertex Animation. Morph animation can also be implemented in hardware using vertex shaders, See Morph Animation in Vertex Programs.