Free Motion Trail v2.0.0

EOV Motion Trail

(formerly Free Motion Trail)

EOV Motion Trail is a free Maya plugin that draws an object's path through the frames right in the viewport: the past in one colour, the future in another. Edit the keys and the line rebuilds at once, so you see the arc, the spacing and the gimbal lock while you animate.

This is the updated version of the motion trail that is part of eov animation tools. It started here as Free Motion Trail, a public beta compiled for each Maya version. Since then it grew up inside eov animation tools: many bugs fixed, the code open, one install for every Maya. It is published here on its own to support everyone who downloaded the beta - install it over the beta, the installer clears the old files away.

One click on and off

Trail On / Off removes every trail of the scene and remembers where they were; the next time it brings them back, or puts new ones on the selection. Vertices and CVs work too: the trail starts from the vertex, not from the object's center. One command is one undo step, and it fits on a hotkey.

A menu that stays open

The shelf button opens a small menu window that does not close after a pick, so you can click through several settings in a row: Create, Remove, Set Range from the Time Slider, Style, Frames Before and After, Transparency Falloff.

Temperature

The line can be coloured from green to red by speed (spacing), by how close the rotation is to gimbal lock, by jitter, or by distance to the camera. Where the object speeds up and slows down is visible at a glance.

Orientation and space

Orientation Tracking draws the rotation axes on every frame. Object space shows the path relative to another object - the hand relative to the body, not across the whole scene.

Animation layers

The trail follows animation layers: weights (animated too), mute, solo, Override mode, layers on parents. Change a layer and the line rebuilds at once.

Your own style

Dashed, dots or a thick line, or your own width, dot sizes and past and future colours. Your choices survive a Maya restart, and scenes with trails open with their trails.

Coming from the beta

The plugin and its node are the same, so scenes with beta trails open with the new one. The installer moves the beta's files out of plug-ins and scripts into a backup folder and turns the beta's shelf buttons into the new one.

At a glance

• Autodesk Maya 2019-2026, Windows
• free, MIT license, open source
• install: drag one file into the Maya window, once for every version
• interface in English, manual in English and Russian
• the same tool is the Trail button of the eov animation tools panel