Newbie Q: How do I leave a trail?

General Animation discussion
1

Hi All.

I have to animate a small piece for a larger active shooter information clip. The background is a generic floor plan.

What I need to do is:

  1. Animate a red circle through the floor plan which is the active shooter moving (I think I’ve got that).
  2. Animate an orange (opaque & fuzzy) trail directly behind the red circle showing everywhere the red circle has traveled (this I have no idea how to do).

Would someone please direct me to some docs showing how to do step two?

Thanks,

Pete

2

Ok, I think I can leave a trail by animating a gradient fill in a rectangle from white to the desired color but I’m making no progress on this.

I created the rectangle filled with white, create the gradient and grouped it and the rectangle and set the ONTO. That part seems correct. I then set the start and end gradient color to white.

Since this gradient fill trails the red circle I switched to animation mode, added a new key about 1 second behind the red circle and at that key I set the gradient to the color I want the rectangle to fill with.

I hit play and well, yeah, I got nothing usable. I’ve viewed several tutorials but (one of them the guy talks so fast and the screen zooms in and out so much I can’t follow him. I’m glad he knows the product so well he can zip right through things but for the rest of us, it’s kinda useless.) nothing is sticking.

What am I doing wrong?

3

Hi!
Don’t have time to explain now so I made a quick example.
Look up advanced outline and link to spline.
Greetz!

edit: in the second example the trail evaporates at the end.
redcircle.sifz (3.08 KB)
redcircle2.sifz (2.85 KB)