The Morph Server was originally primarily a research tool rather than general molecular animation tool, and thus offered only limited user control over rendering, animation parameters, color, and point of view, and the original methods sometimes required a fair amount of CPU time to completion. Since their initial introduction in 1996, the database and associated morph server have undergone development to try to address some of these shortcomings as well as add new features, such as Normal Mode Analysis. Other research grounds have subsequently developed alternative systems, such as MovieMaker from the University of Alberta.