cMotionTrail.mel 1.4.0 for Maya (maya script)

For anyone who has found Maya's own native trails a bit unpredictable sometimes, this script is designed as an alternative method.

cMotionTrails update dynamiclly, regardless of heirarchy or keyframe state of the object, and the update is carefully optimised to work very quickly. The resulting trail object also has sizeable locators ( or nurbs spheres ) to show the spacing of your motion. The components of the trail can be grouped and templated to avoid unwanted selection.

There is no need to create extra locators or nulls, just select your object ( or multiple objects ) and apply the trails. Trails can also be created for different ranges simultaneously on the same object.

I`ve tested this on maya 7 and I`m very pleased with the results. I`m certain it should work for preceding versions of maya also. The only limitation for now is that it wont create trails for object components, like vertices or faces, or objects that are driven by maya's dynamics like rigid bodies for example..... but maybe I could implement this if needed.

UPDATE:

I fixed an issue with some unusual characters in object names crashing the tool. I`ve also added the function to set user colours on the trail and the spacer objects, making them more visible in the scene, but also useful if you have more than one trail in your anaimtion scene.

UPDATE:

You can colour a trail by its exisiting override colour -and connect a trails visibility to its object visibility.

UPDATE:

added the option to draw wire spheres instead of locators for the spacer objects. These are much clearer to read when animating

enjoy !

NOTE:

The tool uses a scriptJob to update the motion trails. I've optimised this to ONLY run when an objects attribute changes ( not  on playback, or scrub )...this keeps things fast.. To avoid mess, the scriptJobs are not saved with the scene, so if you save a scene with a cMotionTrail, close it, and re-open it... the trails are no longer "live".... you just need to simply delete the trail and re-create it for it to become dynamic again.