A trail/ribbon renderer for Godot similar to Unity's TrailRenderer component
This is an implementation of trail/ribbon renderer similar to that in Unity. It can be used to give an emphasized feeling of motion to a moving object, or to highlight the path or position of moving objects. It also comes with a LineRenderer which is actually what's used by the TrailRenderer to draw the trail. Note that this plugin only supports 3D.
Important
The new updates are only present in C# version of the plugin. GDScript version will probably work fine in new Godot versions but doesn't have the new features until someone else adds them because I don't know GDScript well enough to do so.
- New Texture Modes: Added new texture modes add fixed the existing ones
- Better Alignment: Fixed some of the jank with alignment modes
- Beveling: Added beveling with Chaikin's algorithm to smooth out the edges. This helps with trails that have high
MinVertexDistance.
- Variable width with curve
- Variable color with gradient
- Different alignment modes
- Texture modes (tiling, stretching, static, etc.)
- Beveling for smoother edges
Clone this repo:
git clone https://github.com/Hyrdaboo/TrailRenderer/
If you don't have git you can also download zip by clicking Code>Download ZIP
- After completing the installation, navigate to the downloaded files, and you will find the addons folder.
- Drag and drop this folder into your project.
- If your project already has an addons folder then drag and drop the contents of the addons folder into your existing one.
You will also need this input configuration if you want to check out the demos:
Simply create a new Node3D and add a TrailRenderer script to it. Use TrailRenderer.cs for C# and trail_renderer.gd for GDScript. All scripts are located under addons/TrailRenderer/Runtime/ and GDScript version is in GD/ subfolder.
You can move this object in your game either from code or parenting it to another object(whatever you wish) and it will draw a trail behind it. You can also change the parameters you set in the inspector from code.
Note
TrailRenderer inherits from LineRenderer so below parameters show them together.
TrailRenderer specific parameters are below TrailRenderer and LineRenderer specific parameters are below LineRenderer.
- Lifetime: Define lifetime of points of the trail in seconds
- Min Vertex Distance: The minimum distance between points in the trail, in world units.
- Emitting: When this is enabled new points are being added to the trail. Use this to pause/unpause the trail.
- Curve: Control the width of the trail along its length using a curve
- Alignment: Set the direction that the trail faces.
- View: The trail faces the camera
- TransformZ: The trail faces the Z axis of its GlobalBasis
- Static: Every quad in the trail face the Z axis of the object's GlobalBasis when the point was emitted
- Bevel Iterations: Number of subdivisions for the trail mesh edges. Higher values result in smoother edges but may impact performance.
- Bevel Amount: The amount of bevel applied to the trail mesh edges.
- Material: Material override used by the trail
- Cast Shadows: Set the shadow casting mode for the trail mesh
- Color Gradient: Define a gradient to control the color of the trail along its length. (You need to enable Material>Vertex Color>Use As Albedo for this to work)
- Texture Mode: Control how the Texture is applied to the trail.
- Stretch: Map the texture once along the entire length of the trail.
- Tile: Repeat the texture along the trail, based on its length in world units. Use the material UV1 to change the tiling rate.
- DistributePerSegment: Map the texture once along the entire length of the trail, assuming all vertices are evenly spaced.
- RepeatPerSegment: Repeat the texture along the trail, repeating at a rate of once per trail segment.
- Static: The texture is mapped based on the world position of each vertex, resulting in a static texture that does not move with the trail.