Heos Motion Trail

Create smooth, customizable motion trails (ghost frames) in one click. No more manual frame‑by‑frame copying.

Heos Motion Trail is a script for Aseprite that automatically generates a trail layer based on your animation. It samples previous and/or future frames, applies a color tint and opacity fade, and bakes the ghosts into a dedicated non‑destructive layer. Perfect for speed lines, afterimages, magic effects, or any fast motion.

Features

• Adjustable Trail Length – 1 to 8 ghost steps.
• Direction Control – backward, forward, or both directions (creates a balanced trail around the current frame).
• Color Tinting – choose any color (blue, purple, red, white, neutral, or custom) and control the tint strength.
• Opacity Fade – ghost intensity fades naturally over the trail length (adjustable max opacity).
• Works on All Visible Layers. The script automatically collects every visible layer (including groups) and composites them into the trail.
• Per‑Frame or Full Animation. Generate trail only for the current frame, or bake ghosts for every frame of the sprite.

How to Use

1. Open your animated sprite in Aseprite.
2. Run the script (File > Scripts > Heos_MotionTrail).
3. Adjust settings:
   • Length: number of ghost frames.
   • Color: pick a preset or choose a custom color from the picker.
   • % (tint strength): how strongly the ghost takes the tint color.
   • Transparency %: maximum opacity of the closest ghost.
   • Direction: ghost frames from the past, future, or both sides.
   • All frames : if unchecked, trail is baked only on the current frame.
4. Click Allons‑y!: the script creates a [Motion Trail] layer with all ghosts.
5. Toggle the trail layer visibility or delete it with the Clear trail button.

💡 The script respects layer visibility and looping animations – frames wrap around the end of the timeline automatically.

Requirements

• Aseprite v1.3 or later.
• Works with any sprite size, framerate, and color mode (RGB recommended).

Parameters Overview

Parameter	What it does
Length	Number of ghost steps (1–8).
Color	Tint color for all ghosts.
% (tint)	Blending strength between original pixel color and tint (0 = no tint, 100 = full tint).
Transparency %	Opacity of the first (closest) ghost; further ghosts fade linearly.
Direction	backward = previous frames, forward = next frames, both = alternating around the current frame.
All frames	If checked, bakes trails on every frame of the animation.
Clear trail	Deletes the generated trail layer.

Example:

💬 Feedback & Support

I love seeing how you use Heos Motion Trail in your projects. If you have questions, ideas, or just want to share what you’ve made, feel free to leave a comment or reach out directly. It’s always great to see your work in action.

If you found this tool useful, taking a moment to leave a rating really helps. Thanks for the support ❤️