Open up motion. We’ll open a finder window and drag a map image that I have from the desktop to the motion canvas.
OK, now we can close this finder window and I’ll select the bezier shape tool from the toolbar in motion. And then I’ll go down to the HUD and change the outline color to blue. We’ll drop the width of the shape outline down to about 10 pixels. OK now we’ll go to the canvas and start drawing our “line” on the map image. We’ll just go along the path of the map and add points along the way where the path shifts.
So now we’re just going through and right-clicking on the control points of the map and smoothing ‘em out so that they’re not as jagged when the path turns on a corner. So we’ll just go ahead and go through and do that a couple times here… finish it up.
OK’n so we got our path all setup. Now we’ll go to the layers tab, uh, double-click on the bezier layer and rename it to blue line. With the blue line layer selected I’ll go down to the keyframe tab by pressing command-8 and move the playhead to the fifth frame. And after that I’ll go to the inspector/properties tab and add a keyframe for the opacity parameter. Then I’m gonna drop the opacity down to zero percent. After that I’ll go back to the timeline, move the playhead to the twentieth frame, and then go back to the inspector/properties tab, add a keyframe to the Opacity parameter once again, and then bring the opacity up to one hundred percent.
This will create an animation that will make the entire blue line appear in the map to show the entire path of the journey. Now we can create a red line that animates over the blue line to show the progression of the journey.
From the, uh, Layers tab: right-click the blue line and duplicate it. Rename the duplicated line to red line and with the red line layer selected we can go to the shape/style tab in the inspector, click the outline color to change it to red.
Place the playhead at one second and set an in point for the red line layer by pressing i on the keyboard. Then add a shape/write on behavior to the red line layer. You can scroll the playhead and see the red line animate onto the map over the blue line. The speed at which the line appears on the map depends on the duration of the write on behavior. We’ll scroll the playhead to four seconds, place an outpoint in the behavior by pressing o on the keyboard. That way between one and four seconds the red line completely animates onto the path.
And that’s it! We can tweak it a little. Have the red line fade off at the end just like how the blue line appears, but in reverse. Just move the playhead about fifteen frames form the end. With the red line layer selected, go to the inspector/properties tab and add a keyframe for the opacity parameter. We can go to the very last frame on the timeline and then go back to the inspector/properties tab and a keyframe to the opacity parameter and bring the opacity down to zero percent.
That’ll do it! Now we have a blue line that appears on the map, and then the red line will animate through the blue line path over time.
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