Echo / Trail
Ghost copies of where the layer was a moment ago.
Echo draws the layer again at the poses it held in the recent past, fading them out. A moving object leaves a trail; a still one shows nothing at all.
The past poses come through the same pipeline as the live frame, so Echo follows keyframes, motion paths, drivers and parent motion alike. Put a Spin driver on a layer and the ghosts spin behind it.
When to reach for it#
- Speed streaks behind anything fast.
- Onion-skin trails on a bouncing or swinging object.
- Long-exposure looks, using many copies and a high Fade.
- Making a fast move readable that would otherwise strobe between frames.
How it works#
Copies is how many ghosts, Spacing is how far back in time each one is sampled. Copies × Spacing is the total length of the trail in seconds — five copies at 0.08 s reaches four-tenths of a second into the past.
Fade is applied geometrically, not as a straight ramp. That is deliberate: a linear fade leaves the oldest ghost nearly as solid as the newest, which reads as a stack of copies rather than a trail.
Parameters#
How many ghosts. More is a smoother trail and more to composite — past about 12 the cost is noticeable on a heavy layer.
Seconds between ghosts. Small values give a tight smear; large values give distinct stamps. At 0.04 the ghosts are roughly one frame apart at 24 fps.
How much opacity each ghost keeps compared to the one before it. 0.55 halves it each step, which reaches invisible by about the sixth copy. Above 0.9 the whole trail stays visible.
Multiplies each ghost's size compared to the one before. Slightly below 1 makes the trail taper away; slightly above makes it bloom, which reads as an energy trail rather than a motion one.
Extra rotation per ghost, on top of whatever rotation the layer actually had. A few degrees adds a whip to a trail that is otherwise purely positional.
Ghosts behind reads as a trail the object is leaving. Ghosts in front reads as a trail catching up to it, which is unusual but right for a dissolve.
Things that catch people out#
Echo copies the past. If the layer is not moving, every ghost lands exactly on top of it and the only visible change is that the layer looks slightly denser. This is not a bug — add motion.
At the very beginning there is no past to sample, so the trail grows in over its own length. Start the move a fraction of a second in if you need the trail present on the first visible frame.
Above a Mask, the ghosts are masked with the layer. Below it, they trail out past the mask edge. Both are useful; neither is the obvious default, so check which one you have.
See also#
Something here wrong or missing? Tell us in the community.