Activity 4 Add trail lines

Trail lines identify how components are transformed within an animation. When the assembly is complex, trail lines help you determine how parts go together. The trail line goes from the center of the component’s original location, to the center of the component’s final location. In this activity, you add trail lines to the animation and rotate the view to get a better view of the trail lines.

Explosion of the knife without trail lines (left), knife rotated with trail lines

Prerequisites

• The Animation workspace is active.
• The Utility Knife Animation design is open.
• Ensure you have completed Activity 2 and you have the Auto-Explode Storyboard.

Steps

1. Duplicate the Auto-Explode storyboard and rename it Trail-lines.

   1. Right-click on the Auto-Explode storyboard title and select Copy.
   2. Right-click on the Auto-Explode storyboard title and select Paste to create a duplicate storyboard.
   3. Double-click the Auto-Explode 1 storyboard and re-name the storyboard to Trail-lines.
   4. Ensure the Trail-lines storyboard is active.

2. Rotate the knife to the front view at 3 seconds on the timeline.

   1. Move the Playhead to 3 seconds.

   2. Click the Front face of the ViewCube.

      

3. Set Trail-lines on all components of the knife.

   1. Band select all the components of the knife.

   2. Right-click and select Show/Hide Trail Lines.

   3. Click Animation timeline > Play to see how the Trail lines look.

      The knife was rotated so the trail lines are easier to see. Experiment with different rotations and magnifications to investigate trail lines further.

Activity 4 summary

In this activity, you added trail lines to an animation and rotated the view to get a better view of the trail lines.

Explosion of the knife without trail lines (left), knife rotated with trail lines