Make a journey animation

Start with Select / move to find your location. Choose Draw deliberately when you are ready to place route points. The six sections remain available throughout editing.

Map type

Choose Street map or Satellite imagery when creating a project. This sets the map type for every geographic scene in that project. Existing projects use street maps. Satellite imagery is EOxCloudless 2016 by EOX, using Copernicus Sentinel imagery from 2016–2017 at approximately 10 metres per pixel. Place labels and boundaries come from OpenStreetMap via OpenFreeMap and OpenMapTiles. Uploaded image maps are a separate background option.

1. Route

Search a city or town, or open Route options → Location to navigate directly to coordinates. In Route options, choose Draw my own line, Follow roads or Follow walking paths. Use Draw my own line for a manual ferry crossing. Change that choice at a waypoint to mix methods in one journey. Transport symbols are a separate choice.

Automatic routing uses locally installed OpenStreetMap data. Australia is installed. In Route options → Roads & paths, open Add routing coverage, load the region list and build a selected country or smaller extract locally. Large extracts can take time and use substantial disk space; extracts above2GiB require a smaller region. Each section must fit one installed dataset; a worldwide catalogue does not mean all countries are already installed. A visible road or trail is not a guarantee of routing support. Routing errors preserve the journey; there is no silent straight-line fallback. Use free drawing or import a GPS track when appropriate. A ferry drawn manually does not assert a real scheduled service.

GPX, KML, KMZ and IGC imports are reviewed before replacing a route. Select the tracks you want. Joining separate tracks adds explicit free connectors. Import placement can replace the route or append GPS sections after the existing endpoint with a free connector; appending retains existing section methods and uses the current transport. Replacement resets existing sign triggers/pauses as disclosed in its review. Original samples remain available for recorded measurements while geometry still matches them.

Open Waypoints to choose a point. This waypoint controls corners and pauses; From this waypoint controls travel, drawing method and relative section speed. Route options → Route tools contains transport legs and route-wide tools. The scene travel time stays fixed: leg multipliers redistribute that time. A new leg does not edit the project until its next destination is placed; Escape cancels it. Numbered leg badges select a leg while in Move mode. Make it smooth protects paused points, sign stops, transport boundaries and mapped/imported sections. Select area lets you drag a screen rectangle, then delete points inside or outside in one Undo step. Moving the view invalidates that selection. Imported detail is rebuilt from retained original samples; tolerance0 restores those samples. Applying detail replaces intervening geometry edits and can make recorded telemetry unavailable until original geometry is restored.

Waypoint simplification: Simplify the route reduces straight free-route anchors within the chosen metre/image-pixel tolerance. Stops, sign triggers and transport/speed boundaries are protected; Undo restores all anchors. Large detail lists use200-point pages to keep the inspector responsive.

2. Look

Choose an original map palette, label language and borders. Language labels fall back when the source has no translation. Choose line colour, width, opacity, dashes/dots and a start dot. Style the entire scene or each transport separately. Earlier scene routes can be shown as faint linework under the current route; image scenes must use the same background asset. This changes no route geometry or timing.

3D mountains is an optional online geographic terrain layer with bounded Australian coverage (112°–154° east,44°–11° south, zoom5–15). It makes separate Mapzen/AWS elevation requests and includes required terrain credits. It is unavailable for offline maps and image backgrounds. It is not worldwide terrain or navigation data.

Choose a built-in vehicle, Match section transport, a generic symbol or your image. Upright/direction-of-travel, rotation, shading, outline and glow are independent controls. These are original vector illustrations; animated details are not full3D models. Uploaded PNG/JPEG/WebP retain original bytes. Restricted SVG artwork is converted locally to PNG. For a custom marker pointing right in its source image, choose Right as its source orientation. Tint recolours its nontransparent pixels.

Your own map is a finite raster background, suitable for historical maps, fantasy worlds and diagrams. It has image coordinates and a finite resolution, rather than a tiled geographic world. GPS placement and geographic measurements do not apply to an image map.

Save a style, then Export style to carry it to another project. Importing adds a style; Apply style is a separate step. Project routes and photos are not swept into a style.

3. Signs & photos

Add a sign, select its original artwork and click the map. Enter text and Apply sign. Its map position and route trigger are separate. Trigger at a waypoint or a fraction of a section to control when it appears or pauses the journey. Passing signs remain visible for their dwell or a short passing window.

Choose photos, Add more photos, exclude individual files or Cancel selected photos before committing the batch. Queue selected photos with a rights statement and any required shared credit. The queue is saved with the project. Original image bytes stay in the project; drawing copies are resized to a bounded working resolution. Larger original images therefore do not guarantee extra detail in small signs. Place a queued photo manually, by JPEG GPS, or by an explicitly zoned capture time matching an imported track. A local camera time without a timezone is not guessed. Undo returns a placed photo to the queue.

HEIC is not decoded by this preview. Export or convert it to JPEG/PNG on your device before importing; preserve GPS and capture-time metadata if you need automatic placement. Actual support for these workflows has been checked in desktop Chrome; this is not a promise for every browser or physical phone.

4. Overlays

Add a title, picture, compass, distance, recorded speed, recorded elevation or elevation profile. Positions and sizes are fractions of the video. Set units, theme and locale. Required source credits remain readable below the composition.

Distance comes from route geometry. Physical speed comes from retained track timestamps, never from how fast the animation plays. Missing data stays unavailable. Recorded elevation with an unknown datum is labelled explicitly; it is not asserted to be height above sea level. Edited geometry may make recorded measurements unavailable.

5. Camera

Use a fixed view, save start/end shots, or follow the route. Camera move → Quick moves sets reveal, finish or pan shots immediately and keeps the popup open with your selection shown. Start & finish lets you inspect or replace either view. Follow mode has direction, lookahead, steadiness, tilt and per-transport zoom. Image-map orientation uses image-up rather than geographic north.

New geographic cameras preserve vertical framing between output resolutions using the saved reference viewport height. Changing aspect ratio changes the horizontal crop. Older saved cameras use the saved output height for their reference. Waypoint views can continue earlier adjustments, use the main camera or save a custom zoom, direction, tilt and map position. Save changes commits a waypoint view; Cancel discards its draft. Enable Overview map for a small corner map showing the route or background and current position in preview and export.

6. Preview & export

The bottom Video length control sets the total across all scenes while retaining pauses and holds. Timing sets slow/normal/fast/custom travel time, steady or smooth route movement and start/end holds for each scene. Seek or play the journey. PNG exports the current playhead. MP4 can export all scenes or the selected scene, at24,25,30,48,50 or60frames per second. Choose Resolution for1080p,2K/1440p or4K class while retaining the aspect; exact even dimensions are shown, subject to3840px-axis and pixel limits. Review the scene order, filename, dimensions, clock, frame count and cameras before exporting. Native codec capability is checked before rendering.

Rendering runs on your machine. Keep the tab open and the computer awake. Estimate export time runs a short opening sample at the selected output settings on your device without downloading an MP4. It shows a rough planning range, not a guaranteed completion time. It samples48 opening frames, so complex later scenes may take longer. Device load, browser settings and other apps also affect speed. Changing the project, output settings or selected export scope clears the old estimate. Hiding the tab cancels a speed check rather than counting idle time. During export, progress shows the percentage completed. The exporter requests native hardware encoding when supported and falls back to the browser's automatic encoder if unavailable or setup is rejected. Saved output details show browser-reported graphics information; graphics rendering and video encoding are separate. Browsers may hide device information or ignore encoding hints. If software graphics are reported, enabling graphics acceleration in browser settings may improve performance. Export waits while the document is hidden and resumes when it becomes visible. This does not prevent sleep, browser crashes or storage eviction, and interrupted exports cannot resume after closing the app. Progress shows completed frames. Encoding uses bounded eight-frame groups; work already in flight may finish before waiting. Long high-resolution exports use a duration-aware target bitrate to leave room under the file limit; actual size is still checked. A completed file has a retry-download link until another output succeeds or the project changes; a download request does not prove the browser saved the file.

Current bounds are300seconds (five minutes) total across all scenes/pauses/holds,512MiB MP4, even dimensions up to3840per side and8,294,400pixels. Short portrait HD and landscape4K exports have been checked; not every device/output combination has. MP4 is silent and opaque. PNG contains the composed map and credits; it is not a transparent-background export. Required credits wrap into an output band without truncation; a composition with insufficient credit space fails rather than silently omitting notices.

Saving & recovery

Changes save automatically to this browser’s project library. Each library card can download its saved project without opening it. Download a project JSON backup for a separate copy. Import project copy or dropping a JSON file onto the library creates a new identity and retains the original record. The project-menu Restore command and Import old browser slot also restore a separate library copy. Portable JSON imports and downloads are bounded to128MiB, including embedded image bytes. Browser storage can be cleared or evicted and does not synchronise to another device. A visible save error needs attention; do not rely on a failed save.

Undo/Redo covers document edits. Panning, zooming and browsing the library do not add document history. Deleting a library record is outside document Undo. Download a backup before removing a project you want to retain.

Shortcuts

Common questions

Why does a road calculation fail?
The area may not be installed, a point may be too far from a supported road/path, or the request may exceed coverage, time or geometry bounds. Add closer waypoints, import a track or choose free drawing.
Why is a value unavailable?
That route may lack suitable original timestamps/elevation, or its current geometry no longer matches the recorded source.
Can I use any map/photo?
Use material you own or have permission to reuse. Uploading it does not grant rights. Retain the source, rights statement and required attribution.
Do I need to upload my photos to a cloud renderer?
This local preview reads photo files in the browser and renders there. Its geographic basemap makes external map requests; see the privacy page.
Can I use a narrow screen?
The editor can reflow, but detailed editing/export is intended for a desktop browser. Physical mobile export support has not been established.
Can a journey mix roads and unmapped trails?
Yes. Choose the next section method before its destination, or explicitly change an existing section. Free drawing does not require a road match.
Does changing the vehicle change the road?
No. Transport artwork and path generation are separate choices.
Can I animate a historical map?
Use your own licensed raster image as a finite background. It does not acquire street tiles, georeferencing or physical distances.
Does the map start drawing immediately?
New projects start in Move. Select Draw to place points; use North up / flat to reset orientation.
What happens when I close or hide the export tab?
Hiding pauses frame work until visible. Closing, crashing or sleeping is not resumable; keep the computer awake.
Why are source credits in the picture?
Applicable source notices are retained in the composition. They wrap without truncation, and insufficient room produces an error.
Can I download a project without opening it?
Use Download on its saved library card. To restore a separate copy, import or drop that JSON on the library.
Do you support HEIC or arbitrary proprietary files?
HEIC requires conversion to a supported still image. Route imports are GPX, KML, KMZ and IGC; other formats require separate investigation.
Is this a paid service already?
No. This is the local development build. Accounts, billing and customer subscription terms are deferred.