In this tutorial I will show you how to use the motion paths tool to visualize your animation in Blender.
Animation
The motion paths tool allows you to visualize the motion of points as paths over a series of frames
These points can be object origins and bone joints
I first add a single bone to the default cube and under the object data properties tab, in the viewport display panel, I choose “in front” so I can easily see the bone
I select the cube and then the bone and go into pose mode
I use CTRL P to open the parent menu and choose “bone”
I split my viewport and open the timeline
I select the bone and on frame 1, I use the I-key to add a keyframe for location
On frame 60, I move the cube along the X-Axis and insert a keyframe for location
On frame 30, I move the cube up along the Z-Axis and insert a keyframe for location
I will change the end frame to 60
Motion Paths Tool
The Motion Paths options are available under the Object Data Properties tab for the Armature [running man]
To show the paths, select the bone and click on the “calculate” button
The range is the keyframes you want to use for the calculation
For the computation range, you can choose what exactly you want displayed – I will just keep the default “scene frame range”
The bake location refers to the head or tail of the bone – I will leave this as “heads”
Since I used “in range” for the display type, notice that the end frame now changes to 60
If I want to make a change, I can easily update the path
If, for example, I move to frame 30 and move the cube up along the Z-Axis and insert a keyframe
Now, when I click on “update all paths”, I can see that the path is recalculated