Maya2020 Motion Trail won't appear

[Anonymous]

Yesterday I was working on a walk cycle using the motion trail feature but now it won't appear. Every time I didn't want to see the motion trail, I would hide it and then add a new one when I wanted to see it again, in case that helps. Here is a video to show the problem.

[hamsterHamster]

MotionTrail is a strange animal, it doesn't show the global transforms for complex hierarchies, like advanced rigs, especially feet/hand ctrls that have various spatial constraints attached. If you want just a visual aid, without editing capabilities, then you can pointConstrain e.g. a locator to ankle/heel/toe and make MT there.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I was handling some important irl stuff. I did what you said and it's working a little more but not showing the frame numbers. Thanks for helping by the way, Mr. Hamster. I assume you're active on the forums to raise your rank and you deserve it!

[hamsterHamster]

Honestly speaking, I am a little bit ashamed of my advice, because constraining actually did not work (anymore) for my very basic rig:

As you can see, the trail is transitioning with the locator (it is in worldSpace with direct connections from another locator's worldPos). Which means, that it is basically useless in rig cases, unless you track something that is in worldSpace and has animCurves inputs only. Even worse, if the tracked transform is offset by deformers. I wonder, how this line can be helpful in your case.

You can enable frame number display in the motionTrailShape. Be prepared for "doh!".

And, I have no idea what can be done with "rank", yet. I guess, those ranks are one part of the Forum's gamification mechanism to engage users in action.

[Anonymous]

Hello again, sorry for the late reply. When you say that frame number can be enabled in "motionTrailShape" can you show me what that is? A video or picture would help. I am aware of the ability to change the settings of the motion trail under the animation tab when clicking on the box next to Vizualise -> Create Editable Motion Trail, but when I check "show frame number" nothing changes.

[hamsterHamster · Accepted solution]

At the bottom, ShowFrameNumbers:

[Anonymous]

Thanks! this solved the problem.