Is ghosting essential to 3D animations? What about motion paths?

I asked because from my experience, onion-skinning, which is a 2D name for ghosting, is pretty essential for 2D animation for timing and spacing. Do ghostings used that often in 3D animation workflow? Even in Source Film Maker, the term “ghosts” as a way of displaying past and future frame sequence doesn’t even exist, but it has motion paths instead, in Blender 2.7 only have ghosting for bones and in Blender 2.8 beta, ghosting is completely removed. Is the motion paths in 3D animation practically replaced onion-skinning?