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<b><i>"First off, great work! I especially love the animation of
the main step. Any tricks to how to accomplish that?"</i></b><br>
<br>
Well here is what I did, mostly with free software, but easily done
with 100% free software<br>
<br>
<br>
I used hypercam 2.0 (free) to record a small area (zoomed out) using
the lossless UT Video codec (also free) at about 20FPS, although you
could just use your .gif's target frame rate.<br>
<br>
I processed resulting video clip using adobe after effects (use
virtual dub maybe?) and exported individual frames at a very low
frame rate.<br>
<br>
load all of the layers in to GIMP (file>open as layers), and <b>change
the image mode to indexed</b>, use a small palette to keep file
size down. <br>
click <b>filter>animation>optimize (for gif)</b>. this step
is very important as it crops out the unchanged pixels (within a box
area) between frames. the size difference between optimized and
non-optimized can be enormous if only a small part of the image
changes each frame.<br>
all that is left to do is save it. remember to specify the ms delay
between frames to run the animation at the right speed. <br>
the resulting animated gif will be very small. the one I uploaded
was 30 frames at a total of only 26 KB<br>
<br>
it's a bit of work, but the results are well worth it, and it can
help greatly to explain the process in certain topics.<br>
<br>
use lossless recording if at all possible, it will just make the
automatic .gif palette generation in gimp produce a smaller palette,
and will just look nicer and be easier to work with than say, an mp4
recording?<br>
a smaller palette may not reduce file size much, but it could cut
down a bit in some animations. The most important thing is to
optimize for gif, or wiki viewers will be loading several 400 KB
files instead of a few tiny 26 KB files. If the animation has a lot
of stuff moving, optimization won't help as much.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 05/09/2012 3:45 PM, Kesten Broughton
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAO2fFsW8Jsonh75aQDL780gZEzMm0=HJj93G2wQFXQvuzgm5Lg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">Hi sacha,<br>
<br>
First off, great work! I especially love the animation of the
main step. Any tricks to how to accomplish that?<br>
I've put my comments on the Discussion page and added a picture at
the bottom incase you find it helpful. Discard it otherwise.
(note, i didn't follow proper naming convention for the pic, but
not sure how to edit it now).<br>
<br>
In general, i think you should add a few more details to your
steps (as outlined in my comments on Discussion). This is
especially important if we are having non-expert reviewers, as it
really slows things down having to look up steps i'm not familiar
with. You can either give details yourself or provide links (if
they exist) to other wiki pages that describe steps in more
detail. <br>
<br>
I'm about half way done. I'll try to finish it off shortly.<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sascha_Uncia/Doc:2.6/Manual/Physics/Particles/Mode">http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sascha_Uncia/Doc:2.6/Manual/Physics/Particles/Mode</a><br>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<br>
-- <br>
<br>
Kesten Broughton<br>
President and Technology Director, <br>
Solar Mobile Trailers<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.sunfarmkitchens.ca"
target="_blank">kesten@solarmobiletrailers.com<br>
www.sunfarmkitchens.ca</a><br>
512 701 4209<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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