How to make a moving arrow?

Question

I want to create an animation where a arrow points from the red circle to the blue circle.

My standard approch would be, to start with a cube on frame 1, deform the cube to a rectangle in frame 2, than to a long line and eventually in frame 4 I have the full arrow.

Now in this approach two things are not optimal:

The arrow looks really bad.
Its hard work to do this.

Is there a shorter approach to get a more accurate looking arrow which is developing during time? I know the curve->path object, but I dont know how to explain to blender that it should develop during time (as in the image below).

Example

@gandalf3 this is basically it - but how do I get the arrow at the end (instead of simply a line)? — Adam, Sep 01 '14 at 22:05
@gandalf3 is it also possible that the arrow is visible in the whole animation? — Adam, Sep 13 '14 at 20:19
I found a proper answer to this question here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEuWVlbXVB4 — Adam, Sep 19 '14 at 16:36

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 01 '14 at 22:18

1

One solution is to make your arrow as a Curve, and then adding a Build Modifier to it.

enter image description here

It will animate along the direction of the curve (represented by the arrows in Edit mode), but you can check Reverse to change this. Also you can cange the start and length fields to your likes.

answered Sep 01 '14 at 22:18

someonewithpc

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I added a Curve by Curve->Path but I when I try to apply the build modifier I get the error message "cannot apply constructive modifiers on curve". Also: How can I transform a Path to an arrow? How do you get the head of the arrow? – Adam Sep 13 '14 at 20:01

How to make a moving arrow?

1 Answers1