arrow path following arrow head...

[Tristam]

Lightwave amigos,

I'm animating a series of earth maps (about 40 or so) where an arrow moves from one location to another. Where I'm having trouble is getting the arrow path to follow and have the starting point stick at the beginning..so the arrow path must scale along the path...

One way I thought of was to animate the arrow head in layout, export the motion file, create the arrow path object based on the motion file(I'm not sure if I can do that). render 2 passes. 1, with the arrow head, and 2, with the arrow path object. then use after effects to create a mask to reveal the arrow path under the arrow head. Problem with this is that I want to avoid 2 render passes, due to time contraints. I also want the arrow to be underneath the clouds, but thats not a problem.

I'm using 7.5 OSX. not 7.5b, so I'm not sure if the new spline IK would help.

Thanks LW'ers!

[paulfierlinger]

Have you thought of using Aura's Stroke Recorder?
Paul F.

[chilledaqua]

when i was taking a lightwave course, we were showed this motion plugin called follower and i'm thinking that might help. If you just animate the arrowhead and attache follow object, the object will follow the arrow with a certain delay. it should be in motion plugins... i haven't used it in a while but it's pretty usefull. also what comes to mind is mapping the arrow on some curved object and then animating the texture or rotating the object, making sure repeat is off.. that might work if you dont want to make follow objects or particles. However, the cool thing about follower, is that you don't need separate objects, it's good for making snakes and other things that squiggle. See what you can find on it.

[faulknermano]

you could also try using the moving transparency method.

[Lightwolf]

Tristam,

Try this:
Create your arrow with an arrowhead, and the trail as an attached plane, that is very, very short but has plenty (and I mean tons) of subdivisions in the distance of travel.

Apply a weight map, the arrowhead at 100%, the trail from 100% to 0% at the end.

Load into Layout.

Animate along a path, turn on "Align to path" if appropriate.

Apply "Inertia" to the arrow, select your weight map and play with the settings (they depend on your scale).

You might have to adjust your motion path in the path editor to to get the desired affect at the start and end of the arrow animation, but this should give you the basic idea.

Cheers