Trail Effect features

[dragonfrosting]

Trail Update (all platforms available)

While you might be able to get the Trail Effect to act like a flag or cape, that’s really not what it’s designed for. We do have another outstanding request for a cloth type physics object and we are looking into ways to be able to provide that type of functionality but we don’t have an exact solution or a timeline at this time. Still, we welcome suggestions for new types of functionality and I would recommend creating a new thread in the Feature Request section to talk about what problems you…

#Gravity Force
Essentially, a lot of people hoped that Trails would be a sneaky way for making capes. We now know that Trails are only generated when their Attachments move, so it’s not effectively possible. If Trails had a Vector3 or at least one number Gravity setting it would be possible but CodeWriter has explained that they don’t have a solution to this yet.

#Volumetric
I’ve seen some requests for volumetric Trails, which I think would be great but even I’m not sure how it would work. Trails weren’t made to be 3D objects, the only solution I can think of would be a Trail that always faces the Camera, like how ParticleEmitters behave.

#Trail Size

Best summed up with this picture:

@Vorlias http://imgur.com/FwukKDg

#Semi-permanent trail
Some people have requested that Trail segments remain in the world as long as they are within a maximum Trail length so they are not bound by time. Would be a great feature for drawing with Trails.

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This can be a sort of master-post for Trail features, so go ahead and reply with other requests if you have any.

[gkku]

[quote=“dragonfrosting, post:1, topic:40486”]##Volumetric
[/quote]

Do you mean something like this? If so, this is already coming soon</>:TM:.

##Trail Size

Since I don’t think anybody that’s reposted that picture has mentioned it, it’s specifically suggesting a NumberSequence with a range of 0-1 for changing the width of the trail over time, where 1 = full width, 0.5 = half width etc.

[buildthomas]

Do you mean something like this? If so, this is already coming soon:tm:.

No, I think he means he doesn’t want it to look like | when you look at the trail right ahead / from behind, but that it should have some width / texture applied to the very front/back to make it seem like it has a volume. Not just turning to the camera.

PS: @dragonfrosting this should be in Client Features (#feature-requests:client-features)

[programeow]

You can use texture to make Trail have different shape. Anyone has any good use case for the size property that can’t be done by texture?

[glurbman (Don)]

example:
https://twitter.com/VetexG/status/877972917354496000

doing this by continues texture changes would only produce unneeded lag …same as every other texture based case.

[EchoReaper]

Which texture is changing in that video?

[buildthomas]

I think the explanation is a bit lacking so I’ll repost what he meant:

The wake of the ship here stays a constant width, while it would probably look better if the wake extended/decreased in width while it was fading out. Right now it is possible to influence the “width” of the trail by manipulating the shape of the texture, but that forces you to use Stretch mode and that means the wake will drag along the back of the ship instead of the ripples staying in-place. If we could manipulate the width, then you could make the ripples stay in place and also have them go wider/narrower further down the trail.