Weapon Trail

Create a ribbon trail effect that follows a weapon's movement.

Technique

Build a custom BufferGeometry that stores a history of positions in a ring buffer. Each frame, record the current world positions of trail points and update the geometry vertices to create a ribbon connecting all historical positions.

Key Concepts

• Define trail points (e.g., base and tip of weapon)
• Use a ring buffer to store position history efficiently
• Create geometry with proper UVs for texture mapping (gradient fade)
• Update vertex positions each frame with positions.needsUpdate = true
• Use localToWorld() to get world positions from the target object
• Support enabling/disabling with fade out animation

Usage