# Morph Targets & Skinning

**Track:** Advanced 3D — Advanced Creative Coding — proposed (50)
**Framework / surface:** three.js
**Level:** Medium
**Prerequisites:** Custom BufferGeometry From Scratch

**In one line:** Blendshapes and skeletal deformation; animate procedurally.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Two deformation models animate characters in real time. Morph targets, or blendshapes, store alternate vertex positions—a smile, a clench—and interpolate between them by weight, summing offsets to sculpt continuous expression. Skeletal skinning binds each vertex to one or more bones with weights, then transforms it by the bones' matrices; linear blend skinning, the ubiquitous approximation, is fast though it pinches at extreme joint twists. three.js implements both on the GPU, and either can be driven procedurally—weights and bone rotations set by noise, oscillators, or physics rather than baked animation clips. The result is performance and creature movement generated by code, expressive yet computed frame to frame.