[aladdinsane]

Hi,
Does anyone know how I can easily make a map similar to the ones seen in the Indiana Jones movies (and many more)? The map is just a picture of a map but it shows a moving/growing red line from point A to B.

I want to use this to connect clips in a home movie I am making.

[ghotirsd]

Originally posted by aladdinsane:
Hi,
Does anyone know how I can easily make a map similar to the ones seen in the Indiana Jones movies (and many more)? The map is just a picture of a map but it shows a moving/growing red line from point A to B.

I want to use this to connect clips in a home movie I am making.

You could do it by making an animated GIF (does PNG support animation?).
A lot of work, but I'm sure the concept/idea is the same when they do it "Indiana Jones style" in the movies.
A single frame of movie for each frame of the animated GIF?
I dunno, just an idea to start with...

[aladdinsane]

Originally posted by ghotirsd:
You could do it by making an animated GIF (does PNG support animation?).
A lot of work, but I'm sure the concept/idea is the same when they do it "Indiana Jones style" in the movies.
A single frame of movie for each frame of the animated GIF?
I dunno, just an idea to start with...

I had thought about writing a script for Photshop to generate a bunch of images and then use FCP or Quicktime to turn them into a movie. It is a possibility but I was hoping some of those apps had some feature to do this that I didn't know of.

[k_munic]

Originally posted by aladdinsane:
Hi,
Does anyone know how I can easily make a map similar to the ones seen in the Indiana Jones movies (and many more)? The map is just a picture of a map but it shows a moving/growing red line from point A to B.

I want to use this to connect clips in a home movie I am making.

your "way" has a general direction (left to right, lower left corner to upper rigth corner, etc), no circles? good.
do you own FCE and photoshop (elementts)? - good:

in photoshop:
draw your map.
on a second layer draw your "way".
save it as photoshop file.
import that into FCE.
open the new sequence, you see 2 layers.
place a third one between them… arrange them: map highest layer3, mask2, redline1
place a "mask" (rtm) on your new in-between layer.
set keyframes for this layer, move it "aside" - your "way" will appear!

[aladdinsane]

Thanks for those suggestions. This is what I did:

I used LiveType (comes with FCP) to do this.
LiveType uses text for everything, but when you need to do some graphics you can use special characters. I used a box character. Apple uses this in all their demos / templates that come with LiveType.

Then I created an effect which scaled the character on the x-axis over time, creating the growing line.

I imported then a map image for the background.

It is very easy to rotate the line in LiveType but it was a little tricky to fine-tune the endpoints.

I am very happy with the result.

[kaboom]

Could we get a look at this?
Perhaps a small movie of the end result?

[aladdinsane]

Originally posted by kaboom:
Could we get a look at this?
Perhaps a small movie of the end result?

Sure

http://homepage.mac.com/snorrigy/.Mo...najonesmap.mov

[k_munic]

here is my version (tour not done with rocket as yours but by bike ):

http://idisk.mac.com/akschluter/public/indi.mov


as i mentioned some postings above, with photoshop e and fce........

[dlefebvre]

You could also use a much bigger map than 720 x 480 and then zoom and pan on your animated map comp to make it more dynamic.

[k_munic]

Originally posted by dlefebvre:
You could also use a much bigger map than 720 x 480 and then zoom and pan on your animated map comp to make it more dynamic.

that's a very good improvement!

and you can place a plane (in your case: a straight flighting rocket or in my case a bike) at the "head" of the thin line…

with FCE it would be easy…-

[spiznet]

Also, an easy way to do this (if the line only moves in one direction) Is to use only 2 images: one with the map & line, one with the map only.

Then use a "wipe" transition (using director, premiere, after effects. flash or powerpoint) to slowly replace the "map only" image" with the "map w/ line" image. If you "wipe" in the direction of the line, it will appear to move slowly on the unchanging background.

-Mark Scott
Director of Technology
J/B Woolsey Associates