How do I animate a Google map with route and city names?

Hi. I have a task to animate a Google map with some city names on it and a progressive route.
Simething like this:

Screenshot 2025-03-17 155541.jpeg (234.43 KiB) Viewed 2435 times

So what I did:
1) I animated a 3d map motion in Google Earth Studio and downloaded the mp4 render.
You can see it here.
2) I imported it to DR and tracked the camera motion with a camera tracker node in Fusion
3) I added 3 3D-text nodes for city names and placed them in the 3D space having copied certain 3D points values and pasted them to the translation property in each 3D text so that the texts stay in the same place of the map as the map moves.

Now I need to place a route and animate it. I tried to add a background+mask to draw the route then project it into the 3D space with an image plane 3d node, but I cannot place it in the 3D space correctly though a 3D plane can be connected to some point in the 3D space like I did with the text nodes. Plus there's another problem - Google Earth is actually a globe so it's not a plane but rather an orb which means it's rounded, so a 3D plane with a route is not a great variant to do it.

How would you approach such a task? Please be more elaborate - I'm just a newbie, I started learning DR 2 weeks ago.

PS: I tried googling for it, and there are only simple 2D plain map animations and Google map zooms as if Fusion cannot do more...

Hmm, can you export camera data from Google software, since that would be useful?

If not, I would suggest you create al the assets first and than animate camera in fusion , rather than other way around. Its much easier and you have more control.

There are lots of tutorials on map creators online, but here are some to get you started. I would also suggest you look into free open source map software called QGIS. It can be used to get all sorts of map data into fusion.


Create A Travel Map Animation with Real Data | QGIS, Google Maps & Davinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve Fusion | 3D Travel Map Effect

Map Animation Mini Course Davinci Resolve

Davinci Resolve and Maps by MotionEpicFX Playlist 10 videos

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... oMH9Wc7DsD

I played around with Imagiscope's addons https://www.youtube.com/@ImagiscopeTech last year for a while, but development seems to have been held back and development of earth studio itself seems to have dried up.
The examples work with Blender and the final compositing is in AE.
There are quite a few steps & GBs involved, but the results are quite impressive
It supports animated tracks, markers/signs and placement of 3D objects
Maybe it helps?

Hmm, can you export camera data from Google software, since that would be useful?

If not, I would suggest you create al the assets first and than animate camera in fusion , rather than other way around. Its much easier and you have more control.

There are lots of tutorials on map creators online, but here are some to get you started. I would also suggest you look into free open source map software called QGIS. It can be used to get all sorts of map data into fusion.


Create A Travel Map Animation with Real Data | QGIS, Google Maps & Davinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve Fusion | 3D Travel Map Effect

Map Animation Mini Course Davinci Resolve

Davinci Resolve and Maps by MotionEpicFX Playlist 10 videos

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... oMH9Wc7DsD

Thanks for the videos KrunoSmithy, but this is really not quite what I'm pursuing here for. The problem with all these 2D maps is one - they cannot be dynamically zoomed in. Just imagine - you need to show, say, New York, quite closely, enen one street of it, to be able to see the houses and cars right on the map, and then you zoom out to reveal the whole state, and then move and zoom in to something like Colorado. You cannot achieve this with generic map tools and teqhniques like mentioned here in these videos you gave links to, unless you manually save different zoom levels and then smend hours aligning them and animating the camera and the route.
What Google Earth studio does is this (don't pay attention to the lightning fast camera take off and landing - it's just a quick illustration):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P7e6Dd ... sp=sharing
You cannot achieve this level of detail in just maps. Right now the only way I see to add a route in such an animation - pre-rendered by Google - is to export a route data from MyMaps or a similar service as a KML data and then animate it. But I could find After Effects tutorials for this only, not one for DR as if DR is incapable of it which is bullisht

I played around with Imagiscope's addons https://www.youtube.com/@ImagiscopeTech last year for a while, but development seems to have been held back and development of earth studio itself seems to have dried up.
The examples work with Blender and the final compositing is in AE.
There are quite a few steps & GBs involved, but the results are quite impressive
It supports animated tracks, markers/signs and placement of 3D objects
Maybe it helps?

Wow, this is an insanely cool plugin. To bad my Blender knowledge is a bit porr for it plus there's rendering in Blender which is really slow... I'd love to have this tool in DR or at least in Ae

Thanks for the videos KrunoSmithy, but this is really not quite what I'm pursuing here for. The problem with all these 2D maps is one - they cannot be dynamically zoomed in. Just imagine - you need to show, say, New York, quite closely, enen one street of it, to be able to see the houses and cars right on the map, and then you zoom out to reveal the whole state, and then move and zoom in to something like Colorado. You cannot achieve this with generic map tools and teqhniques like mentioned here in these videos you gave links to, unless you manually save different zoom levels and then smend hours aligning them and animating the camera and the route.

You can actually. But that is maybe for another time. Maybe when you are older with fusion than two weeks.

Although in your video, you don't have a zoom in from space you have a fairly decent size map with some animation. Nothing too hard. So not sure what the big deal is. The way you are trying to do it, is problematic since you are trying to basically work on rendered video with no proper data to help you animate. Unless you can export something usable, its the hardest way to go about it.

What Google Earth studio does is this (don't pay attention to the lightning fast camera take off and landing - it's just a quick illustration):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P7e6Dd ... sp=sharing
You cannot achieve this level of detail in just maps. Right now the only way I see to add a route in such an animation - pre-rendered by Google - is to export a route data from MyMaps or a similar service as a KML data and then animate it. But I could find After Effects tutorials for this only, not one for DR as if DR is incapable of it which is bullisht

Yeah, it looks like Google maps. If you want to do google maps like video, than use google studio for it or whatever the service they offer now. Since google is using all their google map data, its like doing Google Earth exported video. They render and stitch images, as it can be seen in your video as well. Its going to look a lot like Google Earth exported video though.

You could track the single points of your track spline to the video (for example, each street corner could be a track point). Obviously this is not really a solution if you have a very long track with hundreds of points...

You could track the single points of your track spline to the video (for example, each street corner could be a track point). Obviously this is not really a solution if you have a very long track with hundreds of points...

This is a good idea actually. You know, I did an elbow animation like this, having connected the centers and the line dots to each other and then - to 3 tracked parts of a person's hand doing an exercise:

Screenshot 2025-03-19 133721.png (73.21 KiB) Viewed 1480 times

How can I use this same technique in a 3D environment? Say, I track 2 points with an Intellitracker, one at the beginning of the animation, one at the end, and then connect my curved line's start and end to these track points. Or in case of a 3D camera tracker, can I connect the vertices of a line to separate points in the point cloud?

Yes you can do this, but you have to use Locator tools to reproject those 3D points back onto 2D coordinates. And then you can link your points to the outputs of that Locator3D with connect to-->

Yes you can do this, but you have to use Locator tools to reproject those 3D points back onto 2D coordinates. And then you can link your points to the outputs of that Locator3D with connect to-->

Can you record a small guide for me based on my video I gave a link to above, please?

Did the camera track work for the shot you posted? There are so many names popping up that I can hardly imagine that it actually worked.

Did the camera track work for the shot you posted? There are so many names popping up that I can hardly imagine that it actually worked.

Yeah DR camera tracker did a perfect job on that video, something like 0.5 error rate

Well, if you can send a link to the project with the camera track included, I can see if I have time to do a quick mockup.

Well, if you can send a link to the project with the camera track included, I can see if I have time to do a quick mockup.

Here you are, the file is included https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

It's DR 19.1.3, don't know if in DR the version matters as much as in Pr or Ae