How can I add a map to my AV presentation?

[postcards_from_nowhere]

Hello everybody.

I am pretty new to this forum, and with very little experience about the making of AV presentations(slide show) from my pictures, so maybe the question has already been answered. 

I would like to add a map the narration of a travel, such as the animated road to the final destination. Which is the best (easiest ) way to do it? Is there any tool which I could use? (Windows 11 OS)

[goddi]

Greetings, I have made dozens of animated maps that show the routes of our trips. I find the RouteGenerator program to do a good job. Just make a screenshot of the area from Google Maps that you want to show the route and bring it into the program. Here is the link to the program:

https://www.routegenerator.net/

For an example, here is a sample of my animated routes we took on a trip through Scotland.

https://youtu.be/8XI857URsyA

or

 

 

 

 

Gary

[postcards_from_nowhere]

Thank you, will try (with a trip to Scotland, too!)

[SeismicGuy]

Funny coincidence a few months ago I put together a slide show for our trip to Scotland and England and that routegenerator software would have been great but I was not aware of it.  So what I did for the initial slide was to use a Google Earth feature that ends up generating a movie and it is a rotating globe starting from the US and ending in and zooming in on the UK area.  For the legs of the trip where I was driving from one place in Scotland to another I searched for downloadable pdf or jpg maps on an area and used Photoshop to draw on my own route (in red) to create a slide that I would pan and zoom from the starting point to the ending point of that leg.  

[SeismicGuy]

On 12/21/2024 at 5:20 AM, goddi said:

Greetings, I have made dozens of animated maps that show the routes of our trips. I find the RouteGenerator program to do a good job. Just make a screenshot of the area from Google Maps that you want to show the route and bring it into the program. Here is the link to the program:

https://www.routegenerator.net/

For an example, here is a sample of my animated routes we took on a trip through Scotland.

https://youtu.be/8XI857URsyA

or

 

 

 

 

Gary

Sent you a PM

[goddi]

Greetings,

Here is another show that I used the RouteGenerator program. But I also used PTE's panning and zooming to follow the car and added text to the side.

Gary

 

[SeismicGuy]

I am still trying to figure out what I did "wrong" to get the focus on following the car when I just created this in RouteGenerator.  My intent was to create a map like the others shown here by RouteGenerator to be used in PTEAV with pan-and-zoom and instead I ended up with this map which is kind of an interesting effect but no idea as to how it happened:

 

 

[goddi]

Greetings,

I had sent you the solution but not sure where it went. Here it is again. (Oh, I see I sent it to the other guy, I think).

I upgraded to the current version, 1.12.0, of RG and it shows how to prevent the scrolling/panning you are experiencing. I had an older version so I had no idea why you were having this problem.

Gary

[SeismicGuy]

Hey Gary thanks for pointing that out.  I think I saw that but was not sure what it meant but now I know.  Actually I sort of like the effect now that I have looked at it several times.

[goddi]

On 12/28/2024 at 4:55 PM, SeismicGuy said:

Hey Gary thanks for pointing that out.  I think I saw that but was not sure what it meant but now I know.  Actually I sort of like the effect now that I have looked at it several times.

Greetings,

 Yes, but you can be more creative using PTE's pan and zoom on the map. Really easy.

Gary

(Added Later- actually it is not the Zoom/Pan but the Framing, S, X and Y to reposition the map)

[Politer]

Quote

Yes, but you can be more creative using PTE's pan and zoom on the map. Really easy.

Hi Gary ,

could you please explain , how you arrived at your results from RouteGenerator to PTE's pan and zoom on the map .

Perhaps the 'Naples to Palermo' result could be the basis for your explanation .

Thanks for you help - Paul

[goddi]

Greetings Paul,

I just re-positioned the map created with the RouteGenerator each time using Framing and adding a Keyframe for each new position.

Hope this helps. Not sure if I did anything else since I did it a long time ago.

Let me know if you have any other questions...

Gary

 

[SeismicGuy]

Here is one I did using just the Pan&Zoom in PTEAV.  Not as slick looking at Route Generator but doing in this fashion has always served the purpose for me. 

 

 

ALSO--I have never quite gotten the distinction between Panning and Framing as it seems you get the same results with both:

[goddi]

Greetings,

Framing lets you animate (S, X,  Y) within the borders of the image. For example, I like to Zoom my images to, say, 95% and put a thin border around it. Then, with Framing, I can animate the image within the thin border.

Gary

[nelson]

I always use a PNG overlay that has the route cutout with the eraser tool.

In between the two layers in PTE you put a solid image with your desired colour and move it at the speed you want.

I have enclosed an example.

Kieron

Route demo_Jan5-2025_15-52-27.zip

[goddi]

Greetings Nelson,

Yes, this was one of the first methods I used a long time ago to show a driving route on a map. Maybe I got the idea from you. But, my driving route was so zig-zag, it was way too difficult to really do it easily. But it did work OK. But this method only shows the actual route. I like, with RouteGenerator, I can put an object...car, boat, plane, hiker... on the route. More fun...

Gary

[SeismicGuy]

1 hour ago, nelson said:

I always use a PNG overlay that has the route cutout with the eraser tool.

In between the two layers in PTE you put a solid image with your desired colour and move it at the speed you want.

I have enclosed an example.

Kieron

Route demo_Jan5-2025_15-52-27.zip 2.3 MB · 3 downloads

Guess there are multiple ways to "skin a cat".  I studied the way you did it and still can't quite figure out the way you made the yellow line gradually appear.

[nelson]

As you move it it shows what is under it.  Grab the yellow image and move it around. Play around with objects and animation.

Look at the cutout image in the folder in your editing program, it is a PNG file, and that is what will be on top. The image with no cutout is placed on the bottom with the yellow image in between.

[SeismicGuy]

I understand now.  The yellow square was underneath and that is what is being moved around--very clever.  I have done rather simple stuff with the Objects and Animation but it blows my mind when I see styles that are hugely complex.  The one that comes to mind was some stop motion animation that I downloaded from somewhere (maybe on this forum) that has an image broken into a bunch of pieces that has a very complex stack of effects along with dozens and dozens of key frames.  I would not even know where to start in order to create this:

[digartal]

Thanks for this info.

May come in handy after I visit Europe in late April for 6 weeks.

Cheers Mark