Blender Market – Mesh Trails V1.3.3: Have you thought of including VFX trails in your animation but haven't found the time or the energy to create them manually? Have you tried creating trails using particles but never achieved the effect you were looking for? The Mesh Trails add-on is a tool that lets users effortlessly create clean and fully customizable mesh-based trails at the touch of one button. Mesh Trails has been in development for more than two years, with a significant emphasis on its integration with Studio pipelines to create stylized (or non-stylized) VFX. Still, it can be used in virtually any project with trailing requirements. It seamlessly integrated with Blender and made it a breeze to use. However, beyond its initial application, there are many possibilities due to the compatibility of Blender's excellent shader, modifier, and geometry node systems based on your expertise level. We needed an automatic trail maker that would match the style we preferred for our animation. However, we didn't have one. We came up with one. It's now yours too.
Animatable Trail Emitters
Mesh Trails can use any Bezier or Poly curve to emit to create a trail. This includes cycles. They can also be animated, parented, or rigged with hook modifiers. This allows an animatable emitter that can transform according to any prop or character's deformation, no matter the size, shape, or type of movement they've got.
Use Any Shader
Instead of using curves or particles as most trail generators do, Mesh Trails specifically uses a UV unwrapped mesh to make the trail. This gives you the complete freedom of customizing shaders to get the desired style and allows for previously unattainable possibilities.
Modifier Support
Because Mesh Trails is mesh-based, it also allows the possibility of using Blender's impressive modifier stack. This could add an extra layer of sophistication that any other trail maker cannot offer. Also, there is an enormous possibility in Geometry Nodes.
Realtime Accuracy
Mesh Trails was designed to be fun to use, and this is why you can drag your mouse around and watch the trails in real-time like they were animating. This lets artists quickly see their effects in real time without setting any critical frames.
Baking Subframes
Mesh Trails can also bake its simulation into a cache to improve ultimate render precision. However, it allows baking to include subframes, giving a greater degree of precision for trail shape. Even if one was to create trails without Mesh Trails diligently, it could be impossible to reproduce the accuracy of the frames accurately, and mesh Trails does this with the press of a button.
Wind Vectors
Have you ever thought of creating a dynamic jet thruster? Perhaps you have a background that is moving around your characters, but your character isn't? Wind Vectors allow you to do this. By adding imaginary motion to the calculation of trail, you can create powerful effects without moving the emitter around in space.
Customizable Taper Shape
Although Mesh Trails has a default rectangle shape that can do what it says on the tin for most things, it is also completely capable of modifying the trail's shape. Custom curves allow users to create distinctive shapes for the trails without needing shading knowledge.
Camera Space
Sometimes, the world's space motion isn't what you're looking for. We understand the issue. Therefore, we have added the capability to calculate trails using the space around any object. The most commonly used use is the calculation of trails using Camera Space. This is a way to simulate a low shutter speed effect common to trailing light that moves about the screen.
Speed Calculation
With the new versions of Blender 3.0, Mesh Trails can dynamically determine the speed at which emitters travel and are available in every shader. This offers a tremendous amount of control to a designer to design shaders that react naturally to move.
Beginner Friendly
We designed Mesh Trails using the UI in mind making it as simple as it is to include your VFX regardless of your expertise level. Making a Mesh Trail from any curve emitter takes just two clicks, and this tutorial shows you how to do this.
Asset Pack
Because of the vast array of options Mesh Trails offers in Blender, We know that it could be a bit daunting to discover how to use it. Therefore, we've decided to provide some sample files that include geometric and shader examples to assist you in getting going.
Studio Compatible
Since DillonGoo Studios created Mesh Trails, the tool was developed from the bottom of the ground with pipelines for studios in mind. The baked cache makes trails predictably rendered at the time of rendering, and the cache is distinct and easily manipulated. Also, we have an email support number to reach us if you need it.
The process of creating trails for your animation could be time-consuming, challenging, and frustrating work. The methods currently available in the field revolve around manually offset keyframes, duplicating empty frames, rotoscoping, motion-tracking in the post, or using expensive software that doesn't allow for mesh manipulations. In addition, only a few tools are available to create stylized VFX. For a long time, DillonGoo Studios DillonGoo Studios avoided trial effects due to the amount of time it took us to achieve a pleasing appearance, particularly in the NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) style. We believed the process could be automated and decided to develop an instrument to enable trails to be used in our productions. Two years later, we're ready to make it available to the world. Mesh Trails far exceeded our expectations of what it could be capable of.
Apart from its fantastic potential as a VFX tool, We also emphasized its user-friendliness to ensure that everyone within the team could take it on and contribute towards it. VFX on any given project, regardless of skill level, is evidence of its simplicity at any level of proficiency. We aim to spread this technology to the world so everyone can incorporate stunning stylized VFX into their productions. We also added a few aspects that were essential to us when we were producing, which we hope you will find helpful.
