Flight path animation maker

A flight is a Route action in Air/Direct mode. Fill in From and To, add a waypoint for each stopover, and the line draws leg by leg. An air leg has a Curvature setting, so the line can bow like a flight arc or run straight.

Colour, width, opacity and pattern are set per leg, and a dashed line is the classic look for a flight. Places are matched by name, so you type cities and not coordinates.

The fastest start is a sentence: the two cities, the view (flat map or globe), whether a plane rides the line, and what to label. Animaps turns it into steps: the camera move, the route, the labels. Each step opens in the editor, where you change a city, the curve of the line or a duration without starting again.

In the Head settings of the route, choose Arrow or Icon to put something at the tip of the line. Pick a plane from the icon library, or pick a 3D model. It moves with the line as the route draws.

In the clip on this page, a 3D airplane model crosses the Pacific from New York to Tokyo. The prompt that made it is shown with the clip, and you can open it in the studio and change the two cities.

Short hops read well on the flat map, where both cities fit in one frame. For a long-haul flight, switch to the 3D globe: the route crosses an ocean in one shot, and the camera can keep turning the globe as the plane goes over the horizon.

The globe is included on every plan, Free included, and the clip on this page was rendered on it.

A route never moves the camera by itself. Add Fly along and the camera rides the line with the plane. Or frame both cities with a Fly to before the route starts, and let the flight cross a still frame.

Label each city, and end on a Pause so the destination can be read. One Route action is one journey: for a network of flights from a hub, add one action per flight, each with its own duration and style.