Every travel video has the same shot: a line crawling across a map from where you were to where you are going. It takes three seconds on screen and can eat an hour to build.
Here is how that shot is built by hand in DaVinci Resolve, and how Mapper builds it from two place names without leaving the edit.
This video may reference an older version of Mapper. Features and UI may have changed since recording.
How do you animate a route on a map by hand in Resolve?
You do it in Fusion, with a map image and a drawn path.
- Get a map image. Export or screenshot one large enough to move a camera over, and check you have the right to use it.
- Draw the route. On the Fusion page, add a Polygon or a paint stroke and trace the roads or the flight line.
- Animate the line. Keyframe the write-on length of the stroke from zero to one hundred percent.
- Add the vehicle. Bring in an icon, give it a path that matches the route, and keyframe its displacement so it stays at the tip of the line.
- Move the camera. Animate a Transform so the frame follows the route.
This gives you full control, and it is the right call for a hero shot. For the ordinary "we drove here" shot it is a lot of tracing.
What do you need before you start?
- DaVinci Resolve Studio. The free version of Resolve does not run workflow integrations, which is how Filmit Studio lives inside Resolve.
- Filmit Studio. The desktop app installs it into Resolve, on Mac or Windows, and Mapper comes with it.
- A Filmit account. Mapper is part of Filmit Studio, and there is a free trial.
Once it is installed, open it in Resolve from Workspace, Workflow Integrations, Filmit Studio. If that is new to you, start with the Filmit Studio in DaVinci Resolve walkthrough.
How does Mapper do it?
You search for places, and it builds the map, the line, the vehicle and the camera move. The video above goes from Dallas to Austin, then adds a third stop.
- Search two places. Type a start and an end. Mapper finds them and draws the route.
- Choose how you travel. Drive, walk, cycle or fly. Each leg can be different, so you can drive to one stop and fly to the next.
- Add stops. Click the map to drop another point and label it.
- Pick a style. The Style tab has a set of map looks. The demo uses Expedition. You can change the line color and switch between a solid and a dotted line.
- Pick a vehicle. A car, a helicopter, a ship, an arrow or an emoji.
- Set the motion and the length. Cinematic follows the route from a distance. Chase cam stays close. The demo stretches the default eight seconds to twenty.
- Render to timeline. The clip lands on your timeline when it finishes.
Pro Tip: Render the map at 60 frames a second when your timeline allows it. It takes longer, and the camera move looks noticeably smoother. If your final video is 30 frames a second, it makes no difference.
What are the limits?
- It renders as footage. In Resolve the map arrives as a video clip. Change it in Mapper and render again. In After Effects, Mapper builds an editable comp instead.
- Longer and smoother takes longer. The twenty second render in the demo took a few minutes.
- Resolve Studio only.
Getting started
Mapper comes with Filmit Studio. The same shot is covered for Adobe editors in animated travel maps in Premiere Pro and in After Effects.
