creating a line of of thing air

[Master chief]

OK Heres the deal , i have a top down view of a building and i have a little ball thats going to move through it , i need a line to follow it in a way similar to how a line follows a pencil sort of like is created at the center of the ball but does not move on its own accord, was wondering if any one had any ideas that could make this work ?

[Fuchur]

OK Heres the deal , i have a top down view of a building and i have a little ball thats going to move through it , i need a line to follow it in a way similar to how a line follows a pencil sort of like is created at the center of the ball but does not move on its own accord, was wondering if any one had any ideas that could make this work ?

 

There are different possibilities... ( I hope I understood you right):

 

1.) Use Particles. Set up an emitter, give the particles a very high lifetime and a velocity of 0. Now move the emitter (for example with a path and a path-constraint or a surface-constraint along the "line" you need to draw.

 

2.) Do it in post with masks. (this is one of the most important reasons why I use AE). For that create a tube-like geometry along the line you want. The ball should follow this geometry. Now render out the tube only and after that in a second imagesequence the building, after that render the ball in a third imagesequence. Now combine them in AE. Use a Mask to hide the parts of the tube that are not visible at the time and animate the masks over time. The ball should be your indicator how far you have to go with the mask.

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2.) Will render much faster but will although need more work from you in post and is limited when it comes to 3d-movement. (Camera-view has to be choosen visely).

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[jakerupert]

Why not use a transparent material effector?:

 

Create the whole line for the animation beforehand and make it visible one by one with an animated transparent material effector.

 

In case your effector interferes with your other models in the chor, render out just the line separately and join it together with the rest of your animation in post.

 

See Example red line attached

ManniMan_UnternehmerN_Sor3_200.mov