Tracing a track?

terrypin wrote on 1/18/2012, 7:27 AM

My holiday DVDs usually include walks (hikes) and I illustrate them in various ways. The simplest is to use a static image, perhaps with some zooming/panning. However I usuallly like to animate my walks. That's easy enough if I'm content with a moving marker. But to get the cumulative effect in the attached example I've so far had to resort to rather cumbersome methods with my image editor.

Anyone know a straightforward way to achieve this in MEP (17 or MX) please?

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Comments

cpc000cpc wrote on 1/21/2012, 5:21 PM

Terry,

The only thing I can think of that might be a little easier is using an alpha track:

Track 1 -- your title page without the path highlight

Track 2 -- a simple B & W mask which you keyframe animate so that the dividing line moves along your track

Track 3 -- your title page with the path highlight

The mask could be as simple as half black | half white which is moved just as you would a sheet of paper revealing progressively more of the track underneath. Hmmm... could you film an actual piece of black paper being moved around over a very light hard copy of your map? The alpha threshold sliders should remove all evidence of the underlying map. Maybe use two black sheets to get around corners.

Regards,

Carl

terrypin wrote on 1/22/2012, 4:23 AM

Thanks Carl. I'll experiment with that. It's similar to the technique I used a few months ago to animate underlining labels.

Also, thanks for the follow-up email with your alternative method using an external image editor. That's very close to the one I mentioned that I use myself. In my case it's PaintShop Pro 8 plus CamStudio for the capture. Actually, that's the way I yesterday tackled the task that prompted my query.

It differs a little from yours, but the principle's the same. I start with the map, add a duplicate layer, draw (or otherwise create) the full track on it, delete that layer, start the Camstudio capture, then use PSP8's 'Eraser' tool set to a convenient diameter to smoothly reveal the track from start to finish.

After some practice, I'm now getting fairly good at it, so I think that's going to be my preference from now on. Unless someone comes up with an even slicker MEP approach.

Of course, I could just convince myself to settle for a moving symbol, no trail, which is really easy!

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK