Updated version of the old Motion Trail addon

Alright, check again.

Thanks for the update.
However, the motion trail did not show up and there was an error. (DeepL)

Hey, sorry for all the hassle, I’ve updated again and this should be the final one.

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The motion trail is now displayed and ready to use!
Thank you so much for updates!!! (DeepL)

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I’m glad to see it, thanks for your patience!

I am wondering if it would be better if we can use the translate,scale and rotate gizmo on the motion trail points to move them, maybe also handle the key handles as well?

It would be better for the user I guess. Using the exact gizmos blender uses for transforms is pretty much out of the question though. The addon has its own selection system and the motion trail is not a real 3D object you can move like anything else in the scene. The trail is its own special thing.

I can recreate the gizmos, basically make duplicates of Blender’s but for the trail, but I feel my effort is better spent in other places like letting you move a frame around and have the addon adjust the handles of the nearby KFs (already working and in 1.1), letting you scale the frames’ spacing (I’m thinking of what would be a good way to do this…), a proper, configurable keymap…

Furthermore, the built-in motion trail might finally be getting improvements. I saw that sometime recently it got a slight visual overhaul. Still not great, lacks the very helpful speed display this addon has and its fading colors are not configurable. It used to be insanely laggy to calculate, now it’s as fast as this addon. There’s this recent blog post https://code.blender.org/2022/11/the-future-of-character-animation-rigging/
Right out of the bat I can tell you manipulating its key/frames should be 100% something that can be implemented right now, no further major depsgraph or whatever else changes needed, and that leaves the other bigger issues with that trail updating or whatever else for later in 2023. I am contemplating trying my hand at improving it instead of this addon, though I wonder if I’d be encroaching on someone else’s work. I’ll muster up some courage and see.

3 Likes

Lately I’ve been trying to use blender as AE and one of the things that I was missing was a way to control the speed value and with previous versions the results where not as clean, but now with the addition of new keyframes if the movement becomes too extreme the path is followed flawlessly.

I can’t believe how clean it looks now, and you can even visualize the rotation? I’m just speechless… now I might become too over reliant on this addon.

Thanks!

5 Likes

I’m glad you like the rotation! I was very uncertain whether or not that sort of spine-based rotation display would even be helpful at all, I took inspiration from the fact that curves in Blender already use spines in a similar manner to display twist and direction; it was fairly easy to implement so I decided I might as well go with it…

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True but manipulating the keys with gizmos will definitely help make usage more efficient to use. Sometimes its the small little things that matters and help working with bigger things more efficient :slightly_smiling_face:
You are doing a tremendous job, man . Thank you for all the updates so far.

I don’t think you are encroaching at all. The thing is Blender devs might abandon it in 2023 and we might not hear anything or improvements after. Thats the issue and I hope I am wrong.

I think I found a small bug.
It throws an error if I pick a “rotation” point and try to translate/move/scale it but haven’t been able to get it consistent.

If I disable/enable it it works again.

Thanks so much for this updated motion trail version.

Just got this, But It doesn’t work with auto-rig pro. It only shows the motion trail when using the depsgraph option which is very slow

Child bones, and bones with constraints, don’t show up properly without the depsgraph since I haven’t figured out how exactly they’re transformed. I don’t have any plans to fix this for now, as trying to redo what the depsgraph already does seems very redundant.

sadly the depsgraph mode makes the addon basically useless and impossible to pose anything into position accurately, why does the default mode work with rigify but not auto rig pro? does rigpro use some wild constraints that is just impossible to keep track normally? cant the addon just keep track of the bone itself?

Would the new parent space code help you for the manipulator option coming in 3.6? https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/108707 since this has the math in it to get the correct location/rotation or if you looked at the “apply visual key” code that updates the values based on the graph

What are the command when working with blender 2 79b settings. Left mouse button is not working for editing like in the video you show ?

Sorry the handles coul i not move i can select them but thats it version blender 3.4.1 snd 3 6
Bad luck i guess

I am using right click to select, in all videos I record or have recorded. Try the other mouse button in the addon’s settings.

Great addon!

I have a couple of thoughts if that’s ok.

  1. Handles seem to be really strange in comparison to normal curves in Blender.
  2. Would be great to be able to access the V menu in the 3D viewport the same as in timelines.
  3. Change more then one motion path key at a time.
  4. Cursor snaping. Snap the cursor to the keys on the motion path and the motion path keys to the cursor.
  5. A choice of what tab to put the addon in.