Index

Tutorial 1: Point Along A Line

This tutorial introduces the concept of moving a point along a line within your animated map.

1. Download and extract the Required Tutorial Zip Folder  

2. Open the tutorial_1.qgz project file that is in the folder. When you first open it you you see something like this:

 

3. Select the premade line layer (1), and click on the Add Symbol Layer (green plus symbol) button (2) to it.

Change the new Symbol Layer (3) type to marker line and then style it (4) so that it is more visible.

4. Change the Symbol Layer's settings so that the point is only on the first vertex (5) and and not at equidistant intervals.

Change the offset along the line to be Percentage (6).

Click the Dropdown Menu (7) ➔Edit... (8) and then add the following code snippet

    -- Point Along Line Code Snippet
    (@current_hover_frame/@hover_frames) * 100

The snippet tells QGIS how far along the line (as a percentage of the line length) to render the point in each frame.

5. Open the Workbench and select Fixed Extent (9).

Click on Map Canvas Extent (10) and set the the Frames to 300 (11) (for a 10 second output at 30 frames per second).

6. Skip over the Intro, Outro, and Soundtrack tabs. In the Output tab, set the output format (12) and resolution (13), and set the output location's path (14).

7. Click Run and render your output.

After this tutorial you should have a better idea of how to make a point move along a line. An expansion to this example would be to make the moving point a dynamically changing marker (like the markers in tutorial 1). Go have fun!

Tutorial 2: Basic Dynamically Changing Markers

This tutorial aims to show you the basics of creating, and animating, a static layer to use with the Animation Workbench. There are three pre-made layers to allow the main focus of the tutorial to be on the Animation Workbench and not on QGIS as a whole.

1. Download and extract the Required Tutorial Zip Folder  

2. Open the tutorial_2.qgz project file that is in the folder.  

3. Set the CRS of your project to WGS84/UTM zone 35S (EPSG: 32735).

 

4. In the Browser, expand the tutorial_2.gpkg and add the three pre-made layers (VaalDam, SouthAfrica, and route) (A) to your project.

 

5. In the Layers Panel, arrange the layers in the following order: route, VaalDam, SouthAfrica. Then right-click on the VaalDam layer and Zoom to Layer(s) (B)

Style the three layers to your preferred style.  

6. Now create a new layer in the tutorial_2.gpkg by clicking Layer➔Create Layer➔ New GeoPackage Layer... (C).

 

Click on the Ellipsis (D), navigate to and select the tutorial_2.gpkg, and click Save. Change the Table name to fish (E), set the Geometry type as Point (F), and change the CRS to match the Project CRS (G).

Click on OK and then click Add New Layer on the window that pops up.  

7. Select the fish layer and then click on Toggle Editing➔Add Point Feature (H).

Add a few points wherever you feel they should go (Hint: This is a fish layer so adding them above the dam layer would be best). Don't worry about naming the points, just add them.

Save your changes by clicking on Save Layer Edits just next to the Toggle Editing button. Then stop editing the layer.  

8. Repeat steps 6. and 7. but change the Table name to bird and add the points over the land areas.

 

9. Select the fish layer and then in the Layer styling toolbar (I) change the Symbol layer type to Raster Image Marker (J).

Select the marker image by clicking the Dropdown menu➔Select File... (K) and then choosing fish➔fish_0000.png.

Click Open  

10. Change the marker's Size Unit to Meters at Scale (L)

and set the Width and Height to 1000.  

11. Repeat Steps 9. and 10. with the bird layer but instead choosing bird➔bird_0000.png and setting the Width and Height to 3000.

 

In QGIS 3.26, or later, the Symbol layer type can simply be selected as Animated Marker and Step 12. can be skipped.

12. To animate the fish and bird layers using the QGIS Expressions system click the Dropdown Menu➔Edit... (M).

For the fish layer use the following expression:

    @project_home
    || 
    '/fish/fish_00'
    ||
    lpad(to_string( @frame_number % 32), 2, '0')
    ||
    '.png'

And for the bird layer use:

    @project_home
    ||
    '/bird/bird_00'
    || 
    lpad(to_string(@frame_number % 9), 2, '0')
    || 
    '.png'

Refer to the What is the Workbench doing? section for an explanation about what the above code snippet is doing.

13. Open the Animation Workbench (refer to the Using the Animation Workbench section if you are unsure how to open the Workbench).

In the Animation Plan tab set:

• the Render Mode to Planar (N),
• the Animation Layer to route (O) using the dropdown menu,
• the Zoom Range (P) to 1:270000 for the Minimum and 1:135000 for the Maximum,
• the Frame rate per second to 9 fps (Q),
• the Travel duration to 4,00 s (R),
• and the Feature hover duration to 2,00 s (S)

Enable both the Pan and Zoom easings and set them to linear.

14. Skip past the Intro, Outro, and Soundtrack tabs to the Output tab. Set the Output Format as Animated Gif (T) and the Output Resolution to 720p (1280x720) (U). The Output Resolution can be set as any of the three choices but was set at 720 for this tutorial for the sake of speed. Set the output location to one you can find easily (V)

 

15. Click Run and watch what the Workbench is doing in the Progress tab. Once the Workbench is finished running, you should end up with an output similar to this:

After this tutorial you should have a better understanding of how to create a point layer in your project and then to change the Single Symbol markers into stationary animated markers. A key focus is the idea that you can tell versions of QGIS before 3.26 to dynamically change markers using short code snippets. Versions of QGIS post 3.26 allow a user to simply use the Animated Marker feature without editing an expression.

Tutorial 3: Flying Points

This tutorial aims to show you how add a flying point animation to points on your map using built-in QGIS functionalities (The geometry generator line) and introduced variables from the workbench.

1. Download and extract the Required Tutorial Zip Folder  

2. Open the tutorial_3.qgz project file. When you first open the project file you should be greeted with something like this:

 

3. Create a new point layer in a new geopackage by clicking Layer➔Create Layer➔ New GeoPackage Layer.... Click on the Ellipsis (three dots) next to the Database textbox and navigate to the folder that the tutorial_3.qgz file is located in. Type the File name "tutorial_3" (1) and ensure the file will be saved as a GeoPackage (2) and click Save (3).

 

Change the Table name to flying_points (4), set the Geometry type as Point (5) and change the CRS to match the Project CRS (6).

Click OK (7)  

4. Click on Toggle Editing➔Add Point Feature (8).

 

And randomly add points to your map. Depending on your computer's capabilites, you can add more, or fewer, points than the example below.

 

Save your Layer Edits and toggle off the Editing tool.  

5. Style the points layer.

Select the flying_points (9) layer and in the Layer Styling toolbar click on the Add Symbol Layer (green plus symbol) button (10).

 

Select the top Simple Marker (11) and change its Symbol layer type to Geometry Generator (12)

and then set the Geometry type to LineString / MultiLineString (13).

 

Change the line's Symbol layer type to Marker Line (14).

 

Add a second Simple marker to the marker line so that you end up with something like this:

 

Style the various Simple Markers to your preferred look.

 

6. Select the Geometry Generator symbol layer (15) and add this code to it:

    wave_randomized(
    make_line(
    $geometry, geometry(@hover_feature)), 
    100, 1000, 1000, 10000, 1)

 

More information about what changing the numbers will affect can be found in the QGIS expressions editor.  

7. A few options need to be changed in the Marker Line symbol layer (16): The Marker placement needs to be set to On first vertex (17) and, the Offset along line needs to be changed to Percentage (18). The click the Dropdown menu next to Offset along line and select Edit... (19).

 

In the Expression String Builder add the following code snippet:

    100 - to_int((@current_hover_frame / @hover_frames) * 100 )

 

Click OK  

8. Select the first Simple Marker symbol layer (20) in the Marker Line symbol layer. Scroll down to Offset and click on the Dropdown Menu➔Edit.. (21).

 

In the Expression String Builder add the following code snippet:

    -- Taken from https://spicyyoghurt.com/tools/easing-functions
    --    t = Time - Amount of time that has passed since the beginning of the animation. Usually starts at 0 and is slowly increased using a game loop or other update function.
    --    b = Beginning value - The starting point of the animation. Usually it's a static value, you can start at 0 for example.
    --    c = Change in value - The amount of change needed to go from starting point to end point. It's also usually a static value.
    --    d = Duration - Amount of time the animation will take. Usually a static value aswell.
    -- Sinusoidal
    -- -c / 2 * (Math.cos(Math.PI * t / d) - 1) + b;

    -- Use with the animation in static mode
    if(@hover_feature_id != $id,
    array(
        (-@hover_frames / 2) * (cos( (pi() * @frame_number / @hover_frames ) - 1)) ,
        (-@hover_frames / 2) * (sin( (pi() * @frame_number / @hover_frames ) - 1)) 
        ),
        array (0,0))

 

Click OK  

9. Open the Animation Workbench (22)

 

10. Set up the Animation Plan with:

• the Render Mode to Planar (23),
• the Animation Layer to flying_points (24) using the dropdown menu,
• the Zoom Range (25) to 1:22000000 for the Minimum and 1:11000000 for the Maximum,
• the Frame rate per second to 9 fps (26),
• the Travel duration to 2,00 s (27),
• the Feature hover duration to 2,00 s (28),
• and the Zoom Easing as InCirc (29)

 

With a decently specced computer you can up the fps and get the points to fly faster in your output.  

11. Add license-free media to the Intro, Outro, and Soundtrack.

Make sure your Soundtrack is as long as, or longer than, your final animation will be (including the Intro, Animation, and Outro).

 

12. Set the Output Format as Movie (MP4) (30) and the Output Resolution to 1080 (1920x1080) (31). The Output Resolution can be set as any of the three choices but was set at 1080 for this tutorial for the sake of speed. Set the output location (32) to one you can easily locate.

 

13. Click Run and get an output. The GIF below is the visual output of the tutorial if you followed step-by-step and set the parameters to exactly what was stated.

 

The link to a more complex output (with an Intro, an Outro, and a Soundtrack) can be found here

 

After this tutorial you should have a better idea of how you can use a mixture of built-in QGIS functionalites and the workbench's introduced variables to generate interesting outputs.

Tutorial 4: Spinning Globe

Given a global point layer and countries layer like this:

You can create a nice spinning globe effect like this:

I set up the animation workbench like this:

For the above animated GIF, I compressed it using imagemagick like this:

convert globe.gif -coalesce -resize 700x525 -fuzz 2% +dither -layers Optimize +map globe_small.gif

This is a handy technique if you want to generate small file size animations.

For the points I made a red marker using a quarter circle that spins around the points like this:

The rotation field expression is this:

if (@id = @hover_feature_id, 
    0-((1440 * (@current_hover_frame/@hover_frames)) % 360),
    0)

This will spin around 4 times during the hover cycle.

For the ocean (AOI in the layers list), I generated a grid of 1 degree cells covering the earth. You need to do it as smaller polygons instead of one large polygon because QGIS will run into issues reprojecting a single polygon whose edges lie on the date line.

Here is how the final video came out: