Show motion path?

[harkyman]

You can do it easily with bones in the "Visualization" panel of the Edit buttons in Pose mode.

However, Blender doesn't have a native facility for doing this with plain objects. Here's a little hack that might you, though:

1. Create an Empty at the same location as you animated object; two ways to do this:
a. Select object, use Shift-S to set Cursor to Object, create Empty
b. Select Empty, then object, then use Ctrl-C and choose Location from the copy pop-up
2. Make the Empty the child of the object (select Empty, then Object, then Ctrl-P)
3. In the Anim settings panel of the Object buttons with the Empty selected, enable "Dupliframes"
4. In the Link and Materials panel of the Edit buttons, set the Empty Display Type to Plain Axes and set the Size down to around 0.1.

This will show you where the empty is on every frame in its timeline. It's not a true path, but the best we get for now. BTW, you COULD just enable dupliframes on the main animated object, but if it has any kind of complexity, you'll have some serious lag in your display and work.

[bugzilla]

Wow. That's a fairly complex setup just to show a motion path. I found that you can show the keyframes with the 'k' key and use ghosting on armatures to see some of where the motion is going. I will have to use that for the time being.

[Mordachai]

Bugzilla, it seems that your wish was granted...

The News: Blendernation: - Animation 'Onion' Script (http://www.blendernation.com/2009/01/14/animation-onion-script/)

The Forum: Blender Artists thread (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=143309)

The Video: Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/2569525)

A big thanks to Crouch for the scripts.

[phoenixart]

Bugzilla,

dunno if this could be the right choice for you, but have a look here:
http://blenderfrance.free.fr/python/Trajectory_en.htm

[bugzilla]

Bugzilla,

dunno if this could be the right choice for you, but have a look here:
http://blenderfrance.free.fr/python/Trajectory_en.htm

Actually, that is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Many thanks!

[Ian Jones]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but does anyone know a way to convert an objects motion into a bezier curve?

I want to generate a complex motion, then record this as a curve path object.

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