Hi Crouch. Very nice tool for animation. It would be really nice, if we would see this feature in blender. I have one suggestion. Can you also try, making it work in pose mode. Mostly, in a character rig, all origins of the objects set to zero point of the rig, but the object itself, somewhere else. As i think, motion trail, gets the curve from the coordinates of origin. So it shows only one point in the view port. Is it possible to do, something about that?
So true, so true!
Blender can now display the motion path for objects, youâll find the tool in the object panel under motion path.
You can now edit and keyframe objects in the properties panel. just drag your mouse to edit and right click to keyframe.
If you absolutely hate using the graph editor for re-timing try the DopeSheet. Its More flash than after effects but still more user friendly and more keyframe animation friendly ( probably ) than the Graph Editor.
Since there have been so many positive responses to my proof-of-concept video, I decided to write the script as a proper add-on. (for current version of Blender, 2.56 will not suffice)
You can find the script along with some information on this webpage.
Below you can see a video of what you can do with the script.
As you might have noted, the motion trails are only displayed on objects. So it doesnât work for bones. The main problem with bones is that their position may depend on the rotation and position of several other bones. Thus there isnât a clear Fcurve to target. Perhaps somebody has an idea on how to solve this?
ps: Sorry for waiting so long with replying. Iâve been closely following this thread, I just didnât have time to enter the debate as I wanted to concentrate on writing the script.
uhm I thought just having the motion path in 3d is great but having now a speed coloring
is even more amazing !!!
The speed adjustment is just amazing !
I only just noticed this thread. And when I saw what it was about I felt very frustrated. I asked for just such a feature a year ago and no one seemed to take any interest.
Anim8or has had this feature for years. It can create a curve from an objectâs âloc/rotâ keys. Each key is represented by a visible node point on the curve. You can then edit the nodes by moving them around or rotating them thus changing the route or the apparent timing. Adding a new key adds a new node to the curve placed in the proper sequence based on the frame number. The curve lets you see how the keys will effect the overall path. Selecting a node selects the key in Graph editor (equivalent to the IPO editor).
That is amazing work, thanks Crouch! [just logged in to write this - normally a silent watcher of threads but this needed saying] - AWESOME - how easy you make it to even adjust the path in 3d 
bobg
a year ago python was still very much in work - but not anymore 
OMG: I was initially excited to see that motion trail display like in Maya is possible to implement as an addon in Blender, but now we have an addon packed with features for location-based motion-trails from someone not only amazing at code, but fast as well:eek:
I can say that animators will not be the only ones whoâll benefit from this, BGE users will benefit too because itâll offer a visual guide for placing and implementing some common gaming elements like moving platforms and doors, it will now be much easier to create a rail for a moving platform in a game level and match the platformâs movements to the rail.
The only things I would say is to add visual guides for rotation and scale as well for future versions of the addon, if thatâs done then I really hope Aligorith or someone else will translate the code to C to be a hardcoded feature.
Crouch, this is amazing work. Thank you!
This will change how I animate in Blender.
Damn, thatâs a beautiful thing Crouch. Have you discussed this at all with Aligorith yet?
awesome stuff crouch
I have a question though - does this work for bones in pose mode?
or just objects in object mode?
as he wrote only with objects.
but with bones you can have the ghost effect to preview more frames.
and that I like more anyway since you would have an army of curves in the 3dview.
claas
Thanks for the comments again, and special thanks to geoadel and benu for the donations.
jay and Ace Dragon: I havenât talked to Aligorith yet. I wrote the script based on the video in the very first post of this thread. I already had the core of the add-on ready when JiriH posted the video that shows how it works behind the scenes in Maya. It was very funny to see that I used exactly the same methods as they did in Maya. Which shows that this is probably the most logical way to implement this functionality. So I think if Aligorith is interested in it, the theory behind it wonât be any problem for him.
waylow: as I said in my previous post, it doesnât work with bones. If you have any ideas on how to work around the problems for implementing bones, please share them.
cekuhnen: true, there is ghosting for bones. Unfortunately that doesnât enable us to edit transformation or speed in the 3d-view. Though you are probably right when you say it could get messy with an overload of curves in the 3d-view.
Crouch, you are a hero!!!
This is really awsome!! Thank you very much for your contribution!!! I really appreciate your work!!!
I you get some help for implementing this for bones too! I think this will be a great feature!
EDIT
just tested the addon. I have a strange behavior when trying to adjust the location. I have to move the mouse very far to to achieve a little movement on my keys. I think needs to be a higher multiplier to get a better effect? has anybody else the same issue?
Another that that would be good I think. I think it would be better if the keyframe get snapped to every frame. sometimes you have keframes between to frames and that you want to add another keyframe on that frame, but you are not able to. what do the others think!
Nicely DoneâŚ!
Thumbs up⌠
Great job Crouch!! I tested the first version out, and checked out the source code to see how itâs done. Itâs a bit above me, but I took another look at it before Crouchâs post with the new updated version after seeing this video:
click on the âeditable motion trailsâ icon to see the video I watched yesterday.
Indeed, this does give us the control over objects like maya has, now if only it would work for bonesâŚ
Randy
this is cool stuff! Thank you, Bart!
i just realized that if my controls are edited(i have switched left to right mouse button) neither left nor right mouse button selects beads on trail.
and i think that this feature would be an awesome addon for the bones in pose mode. There will not be any overload of curves, because you would (i think itâs the best way) be able to show them on\off for each bone, and you can always adjust before and after values to have short curves in pose mode!