Animate line in maps

[paland89]

Hi,

I am quite new to After Effects, and I am hoping someone could point me in the right direction on a task I have no idea how to do.

I am trying to animate a line following a drone path I have flown. This is to show people where to walk in the terrain. I have attached an example video from a program I have seen this put to good use. I would like to make the line exactly like that. Anybody have any good tutorials on the matter? If not is there any subjects or topics I could should know to get started on this?

Thanks!

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

Getting a line to accurately follow geometry requires 3rd party solutions. You have to generate a 3D model of the topography, then create a 3D model, then animate a texture on the model. Syntheyes is the tool that I have that I would use to generate the topographic model of the terrain. Syntheyes will run you between $300 and $500. You could use Blender (free - open source) to animate the textured line.

You could fake it with camera tracking if you stick enough reference solids to the surfaces that you track, but the Camera Tracker in AE is going to have a difficult time tracking the surface of something like snow or a grass-covered meadow on a windy day. If you have fairly large areas that are basically on the same plane you could probably do a fairly convincing job with AE's built-in Camera Tracker, some reference solids and a shape layer matched to each solid with a stroked path + trim paths. It all depends on the shot. The sample you provided would be extremely time-consuming to recreate with AE's built-in tools.

To point you in the right direction we need to know what kind of a budget you have and how accurate your line needs to be, and even better, see the actual shot you are trying to use.

[paland89]

thanks a lot! Will check it out 🙂

[dj.summitt]

Rick really nailed it. This is a job for 3D. Depending on your location (and how specific it is) you may be able to use OpenStreetMaps to generate the geometry. That is covered in the first part of this tutorial. Using Cinema 4D to Create an X-Particle City - Tutorial 157: Particle City - YouTube

[paland89]

Thanks a lot

[kirkeric]

Does the above answer your question?