Motion - Drawing a line on a map
 

I am wanting to have a line draw on to a map to indicate a route taken. So far I have achieved this by drawing a series of line segments then animating a mask to reveal them. This is not great if the direction of the line changes markedly - the speed the line appears to draw varies too much. There must be an easier way - is it possible to do anything with a motion path and an emitter which leaves a solid line behind it, for instance?

Cheers, Nick

Do you have Photoshop?

I do - the issue is not overlaying the line, but animating it drawing on.

N

Nick,

You should be able to do this entirely in motion. Try this:

1) Use the bezier tool to draw your route on the map.
2) In the inspector pane on the stye tab, check the outline box and change the line color and width to what you desire.
3) Then animate the line using key frames on the last point offset.

Let us know how it works.

Mark

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Nick, I gave this a try... it works reasonable well. If you like, send me an email and I can forward you the motion project as an example. DVInfo won't let me send you an attachment blind.

Mark

Have you looked at this ?
 

Video Effect Generator for Travel Videos
Give the above link a look. The software is cheap and you can use any map you want and a custom icon as well.
It sure beats trying to do an animation of sorts and you end up with a Quicktime movie to import into your project.

Tom

just use after effects. Go to effects-paint-vector paint. In the effect controls select playback mode: animate strokes. Draw your line, and that's it.

It's really simple to do in Motion3:

Draw your line using the paint brush tool.

Add the filter WRITE ON to your paint stroke layer.

You can then customize to suit using the parameters in the inspector.

If it was any easier,my cat to do it:)

I got my dog to do it in After Effects... :-)

Unless the line is very complex, you don't even need Motion or AE - just Photoshop or another graphics editor that can work with transparent layers.

- lay out your map image
- create a transparent layer on top
- draw the complete travel line in whatever style you like
- save the tranparency+line layer seperately
- overlay the transparency+line image over the map image and animate its appearance with a suitable wipe (horizontal, vertical, diagonal, radial, what have you)

I have an example on this video:
Effort Mission: Liberia on Vimeo
at about 12:32. The effect was quicked together in about 10 of those last minutes, and it's a darned long vid, ,so may or may not be worth your wait.

So there are tons of ways to skin a cat, unless of course you wish to train that cat to do graphics for you, in which case its skin is best left on.

Also the latest version of iMovie has this effect completely built-in and automated. It's pretty sweet if that's your cup of tea.

Apple - iMovie - Edit and enhance your movies with new features.

Noah

It really doesn't get any easier than that.
I recommend the same.

How can you make the line a straight line?

If you what I said above, you can do a strait line... that is use the bezier tool. You can either keyframe the last point or use the write on behavior.

Mark