GPU Pro 5

4

IV

Efficient Morph Target Animation

Using OpenGL ES 3.0

James L. Jones

4.1 Introduction

Demand for impressive graphics in mobile apps has given rise to ever-more pow-

erful GPUs and new graphics APIs such as OpenGL ES 3.0. These advances

enable programmers to write cleaner and more efficient implementations of com-

puter graphics algorithms than ever before. One particular area that stands to

benefit is the facial animation of characters in mobile games, a technique that is

commonly implemented using morph targets.

Morph target animation requires artists to pre-create multiple poses of a

model offline. Later on, during application execution, these poses are