The wards in Chicago were recently remapped and I was mesmerized by the idea of creating an interaction that would animate the transition from the old to the new wards. I shortly found out that tweening polygons in a non-intersecting and interlocked fashion is a complicated topic. I’ve done a lot of reading about the math and research that has been done in this space and found a few interesting theories which I would like to implement in a future version. Currently, the morphing/tweening/interpolation is done with an array interpolator. Unfortunately, this technique causes the intermediate polygons to self-intersect and morph inefficiently. Ideally, I would overlay these polygons on a slippy map and there would be no gaps between the polygons during the morphing.
Overall, I am happy with the way this prototype came out and how it highlights the need for more robust polygon morphing. I am excited to see what the map transition will look like when a more fluid animation is implemented.
