Motion Trail Behind Moving Object

Started by aknight0, November 27, 2017, 01:00:47 PM

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aknight0

Hi All,

I'm working on an animation where I'd like to have an object moving around my Terragen scene leave a trail behind to visualize the path.  Anyone have any thoughts on if this is achievable in Terragen, or would I be better off trying a different package and merging the videos?

Dune

#1
If you can mask the trail (textures/displacements/cloud?), it won't be that hard I imagine. Just animate the mask with the object, shortly said; white were the object just passed. If it's not a very complicated meandering path, maybe an animated simple shape would even do.

Something like this (2-minute setup)....

aknight0

Thanks Dune, I didn't realize you could animate masks like that.  That gives me a few ideas I'll have to try out.  Good tip!

Dune

Good luck, and please show some results.

luvsmuzik

Quote from: Dune on November 30, 2017, 02:34:26 AM
Good luck, and please show some results.
I will try this now that I have my other 150 frames done!  ;D

luvsmuzik

I have successfully made the motion trail path, that begins in frame 1 and ends at frame 100. My path does not disintegrate (nor do I want it to).
Questions: Can you then assign an object to the trail? (As if it were following a curve, like in other animation programs) Or must you set the animation key location for every frame for the object to match the trail position? I tried location to match at random intervals, dividing the trail into segments each 25 frames, but not with the results I want.

Dune

I don't think you can assign an object to follow your mask (unless someone is really smart), but I think it would be best to view from above and relocate/rotate your object once every few frames, to fit the trail of course, depending on the sinuousness, and set parameters in object every so often.

luvsmuzik

Quote from: Dune on December 05, 2017, 11:56:42 AM
I don't think you can assign an object to follow your mask (unless someone is really smart), but I think it would be best to view from above and relocate/rotate your object once every few frames, to fit the trail of course, depending on the sinuousness, and set parameters in object every so often.
Top view and key animation of object every 10 frames worked quite well. Thanks!