Flo' and MetaFlo' are authoring tools for the now abandoned Animaflex plugin.
Remember creating funny faces by pressing images onto Silly Putty and tugging on it? That’s basically the premise of MetaFlo’, a graphics utility that yields interesting visual effects with a minimum of fuss.
MetaFlo’ imparts elasticity to 2-D images, letting you push and pull collections of pixels while retaining the visual integrity of the image. For example, you can edit photographs to produce subtle changes, such as widening a smile or thinning the nose on a face. Or you can simply distort the subject matter, as you might to emulate the melting timepieces of Salvador Dali. When you’re done, MetaFlo’ renders a new image. And it can save the progression of image changes as a QuickTime movie, making specialeffects animation a snap.
MetaFlo’ can juggle several image layers simultaneously to produce complex effects. It accepts both PICT and TIFF files. You can operate tools for scaling, rotating, skewing, distorting, and translating (moving) on the entire image or on user-defined segments. You produce localized distortions by defining a core segment and a surrounding boundary that softens the transition from distorted segments to unaffected areas. And any effect can be modified by a percentage. For example, you can reduce that newly applied smile by 20 percent or further expand a nose by 200 percent.
The program’s accuracy and flow controls let you fine-tune the interaction of core and boundary pixels. You can adjust the coarseness of core and boundary edges by changing the number of control points in the elasticity-imparting grid used to calculate distortion effects. Higher settings offer more precision but require more calculation time. Still, after all the adjustments, the magic lies in how well MetaFlo’ blends the distorted core and boundary with the rest of the image.
Wlien applying multiple transformations, MetaFlo’ keeps track of the sequence in hierarchical fashion. Handy palette buttons permit unlimited undoing and redoing of effects, letting you move forward or backward through the hierarchy. For example, you could retreat several steps, alter a distortion’s percentage, and reapply the subsequent distortions to produce a different result. Transformation sequences are also stored in the program’s native file format, so you can produce variations from completed images or apply the same distortions on a substitute image.
MetaFlo’ keeps track of the hierarchy of transformations by letting you put snapshots of the current state of the image into a catalog. The catalog displays thumbnails in a separate window. Catalogs store the hierarchy of distortions, the order of image layers, the weight of each layer’s mask, and the distortion percentage. You can jump to any stored snapshot by simply double-clicking on the thumbnail. Unfortunately, you cannot automatically add images to the catalog. If you need a snapshot after each effect, you must conscientiously take each one.
The program’s layering ability lets MetaFlo’ produce complex visual effects. You can distort layers individually and modulate other properties such as transparency. Each layer can accept a 32-bit image, and MetaFlo’ has a pop-up tool palette for producing masking effects.
In addition, layering gives MetaFlo’ the ability to create two kinds of morphs. The first combines two images by partially distorting each into the other. The result is a blending effect, like a facial composite. The second simply uses one image as a template that governs the distortion of the other. Both produce interesting and useful morphs, but there’s no Undo in either morphing mode. If you make a mistake setting control points, you must start over.
To create animations, you define the distortion steps as keyframes, and MetaFlo’ generates the intervening frames. You can set transition smoothness between keyframes as a percentage value, and there’s no limit to the number of keyframes and tween frames you can specify. You can define the sequence from the catalog without reapplying the effects step-by-step. MetaFlo’ stamps keyframes with SMPTE time-codes and offers a convenient Show KeyFrames feature that simplifies organizing an animation.
When you’re finished distorting and transforming, MetaFlo’ renders final images that are equal in quality to the original. Sliders let you adjust the sharpness of the image and its alpha-channel mask. Stills can be saved as PICT and TIFF files, and animations, in PICS and QuickTime formats. In prepress environments, an image’s CMYK channels can be distorted as individual layers. MetaFlo’ uses the values of the input image, preserving color balance.
Beyond the program’s obvious uses in image processing, animation, and graphic arts lie other less conspicuous applications, such as cosmetic-surgery visualization. MetaFlo’s layering capabilities and interface enhancements make it useful and versatile for professional use.
Martinez, Carlos Domingo. (August 1994). MetaFlo'. Macworld. (pg. 65).
The Valis Group
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flo.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
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