I am animating the projectile motion of a ball for my students. As the ball moves through the "air", I would like it to trace out a line showing its path. Is this possible in Art of Illusion?
Last edit: Keith Harrison 2015-02-06
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Interesting question. The first thing that occurs to me is to create a tube object along the path. Apply a texture that can be either opaque or transparent, controlled by a per-vertex parameter, then animate the parameter values.
Another (probably better now that I think about it) option is to create a boolean out of the tube. Take the intersection of the tube with a large cube. Then animate it with a Pose track to steadily expose more of the tube.
Peter
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I thought of the tube, too, and tried it. It worked rather well; my only quibble is that I couldn't set the shape of the tube to be exactly as required by projectile motion (i.e., I could define its shape procedurally).
I like the Boolean idea. In fact, I tried placing a thin sheet in front of the tube, with the aim of shrinking the sheet over time, to reveal more of the tube, but I couldn't get the sheet to blend in with the textured background (a textured background was needed to make the relative motion of the ball visible).
In the end, I've gone for the following approach. I create a set of balls positioned as they should be at 0.5 second intervals. I then apply visibility tracks to these balls, so that each appears at the correct time. The overall effect is that of a multiple exposure film, in which a permanent image of the object appears every half a second. These series of ball images gives a good impression of the path the ball had to take.
Many thanks, by the way, for creating and managing such a great program. I've already used it in the classroom a couple of times, and it's a fantastic resource, not to mention a huge amount of fun.
Keith
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I am animating the projectile motion of a ball for my students. As the ball moves through the "air", I would like it to trace out a line showing its path. Is this possible in Art of Illusion?
Last edit: Keith Harrison 2015-02-06
Interesting question. The first thing that occurs to me is to create a tube object along the path. Apply a texture that can be either opaque or transparent, controlled by a per-vertex parameter, then animate the parameter values.
Another (probably better now that I think about it) option is to create a boolean out of the tube. Take the intersection of the tube with a large cube. Then animate it with a Pose track to steadily expose more of the tube.
Peter
Thanks Peter
I thought of the tube, too, and tried it. It worked rather well; my only quibble is that I couldn't set the shape of the tube to be exactly as required by projectile motion (i.e., I could define its shape procedurally).
I like the Boolean idea. In fact, I tried placing a thin sheet in front of the tube, with the aim of shrinking the sheet over time, to reveal more of the tube, but I couldn't get the sheet to blend in with the textured background (a textured background was needed to make the relative motion of the ball visible).
In the end, I've gone for the following approach. I create a set of balls positioned as they should be at 0.5 second intervals. I then apply visibility tracks to these balls, so that each appears at the correct time. The overall effect is that of a multiple exposure film, in which a permanent image of the object appears every half a second. These series of ball images gives a good impression of the path the ball had to take.
Many thanks, by the way, for creating and managing such a great program. I've already used it in the classroom a couple of times, and it's a fantastic resource, not to mention a huge amount of fun.
Keith
Glad you found a solution that worked for you!
Peter
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Last edit: Pete 2017-01-08