Erasing a mesh overtime - help needed

Hey guys so I’ve decided to try this out for a certain effect I want to achieve but I’m not sure how to do this. Perhaps there is a modifier or something but to get to the point, its in my picture below.

What I want to do is dissolve this plane that’s curved over time from one end to the other, such as a start and finish point. I hope the picture can explain itself but this will be used for animation so I want to render the curved plane slowly getting smaller by keeping its shape of course. Basically like its dissolving but keeping its form. Think of those sword slash effects, it starts big and then gets small because the trail is fading out.

would be great if I can get a quick answer to this and thanks a lot.


Might make more sense to do that with a curve for more easier editing. If you use bevel on it, that allows to use bevel factor sliders, which you can keyframe.

I used another bezier curve as bevel object on this, also enabled UV’s for the curve (keep it generated in the texture properties), and keyframed the bevel factor slider http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=85247