Custom cursor with line trails

[raund 1 Likes (Newbie)]

Hello everyone! I've been a lurker over here for a long time and I think this time is my turn to ask for a little bit of help.

 

I got a project where I'm building a custom cursor very similar to the one showing on the attached pen by Blake Bowen  I'm trying to implement this on a project using React but I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how the modifier plugin is working, so far I was able to get the custom cursor going however no curves are getting formed. I did build a demo for you guys and gals to take a look over here https://codesandbox.io/s/epic-hofstadter-1405v?file=/src/App.js 

 

Apologies if maybe this is the type of question that should be avoided.

 

Thanks

See the Pen mEpado by osublake (@osublake) on CodePen

[OSUblake 18,334 Likes (Superhero)]

Hi raund,

 

I didn't do a deep dive into your code, but I noticed that you are passing the same leader to every line. The way I set that demo up made more sense in GSAP prior to version 3 as the leader object is the old _gsTransform object except for the first one, which is the just a simple object with x and y properties.

 

Notice in the loop how the leader changes. The createLine function is returning the _gsTransform object for that line, so the next createLine call will pass in the previous line's _gsTransform object.

for (var i = 0; i < total; i++) {
  leader = createLine(leader, i);
}

 

In v3, _gsTransform has been replaced with gsap.getProperty, so we need to make a few adjustments. Now the leader is what gsap.getProperty(line) returns. That will work fine with all the lines except for the first one, so I made the initial leader object a function so that it will use a similar syntax to getProperty.

 

let leader = (prop) => {
  return prop === "x" ? pointer.x : pointer.y;
}

 

See the Pen vYeaLyd by GreenSock (@GreenSock) on CodePen

 

Now about implementing that in React - I probably wouldn't make the lines their own component. I would try to make the entire animation a single component. I would also avoid using setState for the position as it's unnecessary for the animation, and just slows React down.

 

[raund 1 Likes (Newbie)]

Hi! Thank you very much for your answer, it's working now thanks to your help